{"id":27543,"date":"2016-05-30T12:37:45","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T10:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/27543-hissene-habre-the-long-road-to-justice.html"},"modified":"2016-05-30T12:37:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T10:37:45","slug":"hissene-habre-the-long-road-to-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/27543-hissene-habre-the-long-road-to-justice.html","title":{"rendered":"Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9 - The Long Road to Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over 25 years ago, Souleymane Guengueng, a deeply religious civil servant who watched dozens of his cellmates succumb to torture and disease in Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9\u2019s Chadian prisons, took an oath that if he ever got out of jail alive, he would bring his tormentors to justice.<\/em><\/strong>
Today I sat alongside Souleymane and other survivors as Habr\u00e9 was convicted of atrocities by a special court in Senegal, where he\u2019s lived in luxurious exile since his overthrow in 1990. For many years, as Souleymane and his colleagues hit one obstacle after another on their path to justice, the common refrain was that they would never succeed. But in a case which looked dead so many times, the victims made it clear that they would never go away.\u00a0 They pressed forward in Senegal and Belgium, at the UN Committee against Torture, at the African Union and, with the support of Belgium, at the International Court of Justice.\u00a0 As the NY Times wrote recently, \u201cmany African countries have endured abusive dictators, warlords and large-scale bloodshed that has gone unpunished. But the Habr\u00e9 case has stood out because of determined victims who were advised and supported by Human Rights Watch and other advocates.\u201d
A number of extraordinary people, some recognized, others not, have added their \u201cgrain of sand\u201d to this effort but none more so than the courageous and determined Chadian lawyer Jacqueline Moudeina, who survived a 2001 grenade attack from a Habr\u00e9 henchman to lead the victims in battle, shrapnel still in her leg today.\u00a0 Cl\u00e9ment Abaifouta, the \u201cgravedigger\u201d forced to bury other detainees in mass graves, took over the victim\u2019s association when death threats forced Souleymane into exile. And everything changed for the victims when Macky Sall became president in Senegal in 2012 and his first justice minister Aminata Tour\u00e9, \u201cMimi the Storm,\u201d made the Habr\u00e9 case a cornerstone of her campaign against official impunity and corruption.
It\u2019s been a long journey for me too, which began in 1999, while still working on the Pinochet case which set a precedent that Chadian survivors were inspired to emulate.<\/p>\n

Sadly, many survivors of Habr\u00e9\u2019s prisons, friends like Ismael Hachim, Samuel Togoto and Sabadet Totodet,\u00a0 died without getting to see the dictator on trial.\u00a0 \u2018Papa\u2019 Adimatcho, badly tortured in prison and confined to a bed these last years, died just two days before he was to testify by video-link.
Today, though, will be carved into history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors brought their despot to justice.
\u201cI feel ten times bigger now than Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9,\u201d said Souleymane after the verdict.
We hope that just as Habr\u00e9\u2019s victims were galvanized by what Pinochet\u2019s victims achieved, other survivors, other activists, will now be inspired by what Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9\u2019s survivors have been able to do.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over 25 years ago, Souleymane Guengueng, a deeply religious civil servant who watched dozens of his cellmates succumb to torture and disease in Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9\u2019s Chadian prisons, took an oath that if he ever got out of jail alive, he would bring his tormentors to justice.Today I sat alongside Souleymane and other survivors as Habr\u00e9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":61741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[],"ji_location":[2167],"class_list":["post-27543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","ji_location-chad"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9 - The Long Road to Justice - JusticeInfo.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/27543-hissene-habre-the-long-road-to-justice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9 - 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