Notorious former Chad dictator Hissene Habre convicted of torture, rape, sexual slavery and war crimes in Senegal
Witnesses told court about electric shocks, cigarette burns and bodies rotting in cells inside infamous regime prisons
A NOTORIOUS former African dictator has been found guilty of torture, rape, sexual slavery and war crimes.
Hissene Habre, 73, who ruled Chad with an iron fist from 1982 to 1990, was convicted of a string of offences at a landmark trial in Senegal.
The despot organised the torture of tens of thousands of political prisoners during his tyrannical reign, with an estimated 40,000 thought to have been killed by his feared secret police.
Witnesses told the court in Dakar how they were tormented with electric shocks and cigarette burns while imprisoned in his notorious jails – one of the most infamous of which was a converted swimming pool.
Survivor Souleymane Guengueng, who was in jail for two-and-a-half years, said: “I saw my friends and fellow inmates die from hunger, die from despair, die from torture and die from sickness.”
Some described having gas squirted in their eyes, being suffocated, beaten and dunked in waste, with bodies being left to rot in their cells.
Habre was ousted from power by the current President of Chad, Idriss Deby, in 1990, going into exile in nearby Senegal.
In 2005 a Belgian court issued a warrant for his arrest, but Senegal arrested him in 2013 after the African Union asked the country to put him on trial there on behalf of the entire continent.
The former despot’s lawyers now have 15 days to appeal against his conviction.
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