The Trial of Hissène Habré: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice (African Arguments) - Hardcover

Celeste Hicks

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1786991845 ISBN 13: 9781786991843

Publisher: Zed Books (UK), 2018

Synopsis

When Hissène Habré, the deposed dictator of Chad, was found guilty of crimes against humanity in 2016, it was described as ‘a watershed for human rights justice in Africa and beyond’. For the first time, an African war criminal had been convicted on African soil.

Having followed the trial from the very beginning and interviewed many of those involved, journalist Celeste Hicks tells the remarkable story of how Habré was brought to justice. His conviction followed a heroic 25 year campaign by activists and survivors of Habré’s atrocities, which succeeded despite international indifference, opposition from Habré’s allies, and several failed attempts to bring him to trial in Europe and elsewhere. In the face of such overwhelming odds, the conviction of a once untouchable tyrant represents a major turning point, with profound implications for African justice and the future of human rights activism globally.

About this title

About the Author

Celeste Hicks is a freelance journalist who has been writing about Chad and the Sahel for more than ten years. Previously BBC correspondent in Chad and Mali, she worked for BBC World Service African Service in London before becoming an independent journalist in 2011. She writes for BBC, the Guardian, World Politics Review, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Africa Report, Bloomberg and many others. She is the author of Africa’s New Oil: Power, Pipelines and Future Fortunes (Zed 2015).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Trial of Hissène Habré

How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice

By Celeste Hicks

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2018 Celeste Hicks
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78699-184-3

Contents

Acknowledgements, xi, 
Introduction, i, 
1. From the presidential palace to Ouakam, 15, 
2. The long road to Dakar, 45, 
3. The Extraordinary African Chambers, 77, 
4. Healing at home, 115, 
5. The international context, 143, 
Conclusion, 175, 
Bibliography, 191, 
Interviews, 193, 
Notes, 195, 
Index, 207, 

CHAPTER 1

FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL PALACE TO OUAKAM

Habré's route to power

Independence was never going to be easy for Chad. Of little use to France during its colonial occupation of Central and West Africa, it had been incorporated into French Equatorial Africa in 1920. The entire northern half of the country, mostly rocky Saharan desert, had been classified as 'Tchad Inutile' (Useless Chad), and development, in particular raising educational levels, had been concentrated in the 'utile' and more fertile south. Chad lagged behind other African colonies such as Senegal or Côte d'Ivoire. There was no railway, hardly any roads, and it was seen primarily as a source of raw materials including cotton. Politically it was as unstable as a country could be, and when it gained independence in August i960 along with most of the other former French colonies, there was barely a government to speak of. Political parties did exist but they were factional, badly organised and poorly funded; there were strong ethnic rivalries between the mostly Muslim and pastoralist north and the mostly Christian southern sedentary farmers.

Into this breach stepped François Tombalbaye, a Sara from Chad's more fertile southern Sahel belt who had received a French education. He was the leader of the PPT (Chadian Progressive Party), which had led Chad's largely tokenistic government under French rule. Although he assumed power in i960 without any obvious rival, it didn't take him long to begin to alienate Chad's political class. From the early days of his rule, his tendency to promote and concentrate power in the hands of southerners exacerbated those regional geographical and ethnic tensions which had existed during French rule. Democracy got off to a poor start. Just two years after independence in 1962, he took the major step of dissolving all political parties except the PPT, and followed it with the National Assembly just a few days later.

Tombalbaye's seeming dependence on France was a source of resentment and tension, though his policy vis-à-vis the former colonial power was never consistent. Although France had formally decolonised, in practice it retained a large presence in Chad which was mostly occupied with securing cheap Chadian cotton for French mills. This all came to a head in 1964 when Tombalbaye suddenly ordered the former colonial power to reduce its military presence in the BET province (Borkou Ennedi Tibesti) ‐ Chad's vast desert north. Suddenly the bulk of competent former colonial officials were pushed aside in favour of less skilled southerners. Along with his policy of 'Africanisation' which involved replacing French names and places with traditional African ones, this created resentment among the northerners who felt the southern officials had little understanding of life in the desert. In protest, the first of an almost interminable list of Chadian desert revolts began in the early 1960s in Bardai, in the Teda/Daza heartlands of the desert, and soon spread to nearby Zouar. Popular discontent spread to other parts of the country. In November 1965 a rise in local taxes prompted people in the central town of Mangalmé to take to the streets; a visit by the country's Interior Minister in a bid to quell the protests led to riots in the streets in which an estimated 500 people were killed by security forces, one of the worst massacres in Chad's history.

The various rebellions which began to break out on a number of fronts from Guera to Wadai to Lake Chad during the 1960s and early 1970s proved extremely problematic for Tombalbaye and his largely ineffective army. Eventually some of these forces came together and coalesced into a new rebel group, the Chad National Liberation Front (FROLINAT), which was founded at Nyala in Darfur in June 1966. FROLINAT would go on to dominate Chadian politics for years to come. Initially led by the dissident Ibrahim Abatcha, the group expanded rapidly, bringing in other discontents from northern and eastern groups such as the Zaghawa, Massalit and Toubou. Over the next few years there followed repeated clashes between the government and the rebels and eastern Chad began to slip out of central government's control. As the revolt grew, Tombalbaye was only able to hold on by the skin of his teeth after being forced to appeal to the French for military assistance, which was reluctantly provided. In return for French military support, he begrudgingly agreed to a programme of moderate political and tax reforms which briefly calmed tensions. In 1969 he won another term as president, but he had been the only candidate on the ballot.

Nevertheless, this brief respite in Chad's political chaos was not to last. Trouble was brewing on the northern border. In 1969 a group of army officers led by the then unknown Colonel Muammar Qaddafi had overthrown King Idris in Libya. Almost immediately, Qaddafi's unpredictable and expansionist pan-Arab agenda began to emerge and he took an interest in Chad and in stoking the rebellions. The first permanent base of FROLINAT was opened in Tripoli in 1969 and Qaddafi hosted a number of the Toubou leaders. To many observers' surprise, he also revived Libya's territorial claim to the Aouzou strip, a 43,000-squaremile piece of desert situated in northern Chad and containing a small oasis. This territory had been granted to Benito Mussolini's Italian colonial presence in Libya by representatives of the French colonial government in 1935, but this treaty was never ratified by France, and during the chaos of the Second World War it appeared to have been forgotten about. But not by Qaddafi. Not long after he came to power, his cartographers issued new maps showing that the border between Libya and Chad had been moved south by approximately sixty miles. In 1971 Tombalbaye narrowly escaped a coup plot which many suspected had been backed by Libya, and in 1972, during FROLINAT incursions into the BET, clear evidence of Libyan weaponry and support was found among the rebels. But Libya's ambitions were much larger than that, and in 1973, just six months after Chad and Libya had signed a harmless-looking Treaty of Friendship, Libyan soldiers moved into the Aouzou strip on the basis of the 1935 agreement. Tombalbaye was furious but largely powerless to act. His only recourse was to submit a complaint to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was opposed to interference with colonial boundaries.

Into this cross-border postcolonial mess stepped Hissene Habré, the illegitimate son of a herder born in Faya Largeau in 1942, the same year as Colonel Qaddafi. He is a Toubou (Gorane is the Arabic name and the group is also known as the Teda) from the Anakaza sub-sub-clan of the Daza, a plain-dwelling non-aristocratic branch of the largely nomadic Toubou, a heritage which has pitted him against the group's higher-status traditional leaders throughout his life. After a primary school education, he became a sub-prefect in Faya Largeau. His intelligence was soon noticed by French officials in Chad's BET province, and he was chosen to attend the Institut de Droit Publique in Paris and then went on to study at the Institute des Sciences Politiques, where he stood out as an excellent student. On his return to Chad in 1971, and still in his early twenties, he had seemed so impressive that it was said that Tombalbaye had personally asked him to return to carry out a secret mission to Libya. But it wasn't long before he showed his true colours and made contact with the leaders of FROLINAT. Quickly he was appointed by the 'Derde', the non-hereditary elected leader of the Toubou, to lead the FROLINAT Second Army. This choice was to set him on a path of ineluctable rivalry with the son of the Derde, Goukouni Oueddei, another prominent commander of FROLINAT forces, which would last for the next fifteen years.

Hissène Habré first came to international attention in 1974 when his fighters attacked the desert oasis of Bardai and took hostage three young Europeans who were working on an archaeology project in the caves and oases of the Sahara. The French media lapped up the audacious demands for a ransom and the plight of the young archaeologist Françoise Claustre, whose husband was also kidnapped when he rushed to Tibesti to help her. A French intermediary, Captain Pierre Galopin, was executed by the rebels when he was sent to negotiate the hostages' release. Habré soon realised the value of his captives, and demanded a higher ransom and weapons for his cause. The hostages created a delicate and protracted political crisis with France which was to last until they were finally released in 1977.

The end of Tombalbaye

By 1975 the writing was on the wall for President François Tombalbaye, who had by then changed his name to Ngarta (chief) Tombalbaye as part of his 'authenticity' Africanisation drive. He continued to anger the northerners by his brutal suppression of the FROLINAT revolt and the imposition of what was perceived to be a southern initiation ceremony for any recruits to government positions. The French had become tired of his refusal to usher in political reforms and his seemingly schizophrenic dalliances with Qaddafi. In the end, drought in the Sahel, economic crisis and the failure to pay salaries all coalesced into a wave of domestic discontent with his rule. When he began to crack down on dissent by arresting a number of officers in the army, including the popular General Felix Malloum, it was only a matter of time before a military coup was launched. On 12 April 1975 rebel soldiers broke into the presidential palace on the banks of the Chari River in central N'Djamena and Tombalbaye was killed. Malloum, the former commander in chief of Chad's armed forces, became Chad's new president.

However, Malloum fared little better than Tombalbaye in resolving the innate tensions in a land of marked geographical and demographic contrasts, where poverty, lack of development and tribal rivalries continued to challenge the ability of central government to control remote hinterlands. Libya's Colonel Qaddafi had no time for him. In August 1975 Libya formally annexed the Aouzou strip and as the situation deteriorated, Malloum was forced against his better judgement to turn to France for help. France, which was still in the afterglow of Charles De Gaulle's commitment to the former African colonies, responded favourably and dispatched a contingent of soldiers to protect Chad's territorial integrity. Once tensions were calmed, talks began; and in 1978, under pressure from Sudan, which was concerned about Chadian rebel activities in its western Darfur region, Malloum seemingly foolishly agreed to allow the ruthlessly ambitious Hissene Habré to become Prime Minister.

Again this political arrangement was not to last, and by 1979 Habré's loyalties were exposed ‐ fighting broke out between his forces, the FAN (Armed Forces of the North), and Malloum's national army in the streets of N'Djamena. Goukouni Oueddei, the great Toubou rival who had opposed Habré's decision to serve under Malloum, and enjoyed the support of Libya, saw his opportunity to attack. He led his newly formed FAP (Popular Armed Forces), the remnants of FROLINAT, into battle with Habré's FAN forces. N'Djamena was brought to its knees by a bloody and confusing three-way battle. As the skirmishes continued, this chaos of shifting alliances gradually eroded the authority of Malloum and Chad's national transitional government. At a peace conference in 1979 in Kano, Nigeria, Malloum was forced into exile. Finally Goukouni Oueddei emerged as president of a newly formed Transitional National Government of Chad (GUNT), with Habré as Minister of Defence and members of FROLINAT in most key positions.

But the rivalry between Goukouni and Habré could also not be contained. Less than a year later, in early 1980, bitter fighting between Habré's FAN and Goukouni's FAP broke out on the streets of N'Djamena. In a brutal wave of killings and displacement, at least 3000 people are thought to have been killed. Thousands fled as refugees into neighbouring countries as the rival militias clashed, and N'Djamena was heavily damaged. The carnage only ended when Qaddafi sent 4000 troops from Aouzou to help President Goukouni ‐ which was viewed as a deep humiliation and betrayal by many Chadians. Unable to stand up to the Libyans, Habré was forced into exile in Cameroon in late 1980.

But he was far from finished. From exile, he planned his revenge. Always a staunch opponent of Libya, his resolve was hardened by Qaddafi's announcement in January 1981 that Libya and Chad under Goukouni and his GUNT were now unified as one country. This news also worried regional leaders, who proposed the organisation of an African peacekeeping mission under the auspices of the OAU, which was intended to replace Libyan troops. However, at the end of 1981, perhaps sensing how unpopular Qaddafi was in Chad, Goukouni Oueddei's GUNT surprisingly ordered the Libyan troops to leave. Even more surprisingly they did, leaving Chad dangerously exposed to Habré's forces which had been rearming and reorganising in Darfur. In December 1981 the first ever African peacekeeping mission, 3000 strong, finally deployed to Chad. But it was already too late. By the end of the year, Habré's FAN had attacked and occupied Adré, Guereda, Iriba and, significantly, Abeche. He began a deadly march westwards, straight towards N'Djamena, with the OAU force looking on helplessly. On 7 June 1982 Habré marched with his troops victoriously into the capital. Goukouni reportedly stormed out of an OAU meeting convened to solve the political crisis, shouting 'I am betrayed!' He disappeared into exile in Cameroon.

Habré in power

Hissene Habré's eight-year rule is remembered by many Chadians as the country's darkest time. Evidence of Habré's brutality already existed in the form of a number of mass graves which had been discovered near his home in N'Djamena following his retreat from the capital after the deadly FAN–FAP clashes of 1980. His determination to acquire power and eliminate his rivals had been proven beyond all doubt. The country's chronic instability had been exposed and there was a continuing threat of violence and rebellion, with Libya snapping at his heels. In order to assert control, almost as soon as he was settled into N'Djamena's Presidential Palace Habré established a single ruling party, the UNIR (National Union for Independence and Revolution) which he controlled with an iron grip. He established the military's power through the National Armed Forces Command Council (CCFAN), which was almost completely dominated by his Gorane kinsmen (another name for the Toubou) from northern Chad. Half the country's national budget was dedicated to the military. He set about forming 'a dictatorship without precedent and attempted to destroy all forms of opposition'.

Before long Habré had put in place a complex new system of information and security reporting, which included the DDS, a new agency which was dedicated to spying and reporting on all behaviour and activity of ordinary Chadians suspected of being against 'the national interest'. According to one report uncovered by HRW, the DDS constituted 'the eyes and ears of the President of the Republic' and reported to him on a daily basis, although as we shall see, the extent to which Habré was directly responsible for the acts of torture carried out by his operatives in his name was to become hotly disputed during the court case against him in 2015-16. Originally designed to collect information to be used in the fight against Libya, the DDS soon became charged with gathering even the smallest details about any political opposition. It worked on a system of information sharing and denouncement which could easily land friends, colleagues and even family members in jail. All members of the DDS were obliged to swear an oath of loyalty to the president when they took up their jobs. The agency had tentacles right across the country, including a branch in every electoral borough. It was rapidly expanded in the early 1980s to include a number of new services such as the Presidential Investigation Service and the armed wing, the Special Rapid Action Brigade (BSIR), which carried out arrests, tortures and executions. These intelligence services, the army and secret police, contributed to an overwhelming system of surveillance and punishment, which created a climate of fear in Chad in the 1980s. All four directors of the DDS during the 1980s ‐ Salah Younouss, Guihini Korei, Ahmat Allatchi and Toke Dadi ‐ were from Habré's Gorane ethnic group.

Political prisoners were held in a network of jails where the DDS came directly to carry out interrogations, and information about all detainees was held at DDS headquarters. Proper judicial process for those brought in for questioning was often ignored. Many of these prisons were secret. The most notorious was known as 'La Piscine', an underground interrogation centre in a former indoor swimming pool used by families of colonial officers during French rule. Cells in La Piscine were no bigger than 3 metres square, and would often contain up to fifty prisoners. Being underground it became stifling in the hot summer months when temperatures regularly reach over 45°C. In N'Djamena there were six other prisons – 'Les Locaux' in a former French colonial commissariat building, the Camp des Martyrs on a military base, the Gendarmerie camp, a prison in the grounds of the presidential palace next to one of Habré's offices which welcomed 'special prisoners' including members of Goukouni Oueddei's family, the BSIR prison and the prison de Moursal, which was created towards the end of Habré's rule. Conditions in all these prisons were described as appalling, with flooding, infestations, little ventilation and massive overcrowding.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Zed Books (UK)
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1786991845
• ISBN 13: 9781786991843
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232