More than 10,000 victims or relatives of victims of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré began to receive compensation from the government, eight years after his life sentence for crimes against humanity, NGOs announced on Tuesday March 5.
“Payments began on February 23,” said the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in a statement, specifying that the compensation of 10 billion CFA francs (some 15.2 million euros) is intended for “survivors prisons and [to] the families of those who were killed under [Hissene] Habré.” The former dictator, overthrown in 1990 in Chad, died in prison in Dakar on August 24, 2021.
“There are around 10,800 victims, each received 925,000 CFA francs [1,406 euros]. We shared equally, direct and indirect victims received the same amount,” the president of the Association for Human Rights in Chad, Djidda Oumar, told AFP. This amount, however, would only represent a “small fraction of what was awarded to them by the courts, and much, much less than what they are entitled to under international law,” deplores the ICJ.
The press release recalls in particular that the court of appeal of the Extraordinary African Chambers in Dakar, a special tribunal supported by the African Union (AU) which had convicted Hissène Habré, had awarded, in April 2017, 82 billion CFA francs (approximately 125 million euros) to the victims.
40,000 deaths from Habré regime repression
This court, which confirmed the conviction of Hissène Habré in 2017, had also mandated an AU fund to compensate the victims from the former leader's property and voluntary contributions. But this fund is still not operational while many victims died without receiving anything.
In March 2015, the Chadian justice system had already sentenced twenty-four former agents of the political police under Habré to pay 75 billion CFA francs (approximately 114 million euros) in damages to the identified victims, ordering the government to pay half of the amount and the convicted officers to pay the other.
Hissène Habré, who ruled Chad from 1982 to 1990 and who found refuge in Senegal after being ousted from power, was arrested, charged and tried by a special court there. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity, rape, executions, slavery and kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison after an unprecedented trial.
A Chadian commission of inquiry put the number of victims of repression under the Habré regime at 40,000. The former dictator served his sentence in Senegal where he succumbed to Covid-19 in August 2021, at the age of 79, and where he was buried.
