Now in custody, the despot would lastly must reply for his crimes.

In his ebook, “To Catch a Dictator,” Reed Brody, an American lawyer who labored on the case for Human Rights Watch, recounts the lengthy effort to convey Habre to justice. It’s an absorbing saga that raises a disturbing query: How do brutal fascists like Habre and different murderous heads of state evade a courtroom reckoning for thus lengthy after falling from energy? For almost 25 years, Chad’s former ruler “loved a snug exile” with “villas and servants and dazzling views of the Atlantic Ocean,” Brody writes. “One factor we knew … was that Habré wouldn’t be taking place quietly.”

The proof towards him was stark and indeniable. But Habre maintained his freedom by exploiting the complexities of worldwide justice, stirring up remnants of his energy base, and capitalizing on the shifting winds of African politics and geopolitics. His case underscores a dispiriting fact: Despots, nonetheless fearsome in exile, keep an outsize benefit over their justice-seeking victims. Establishments for adjudicating the worst offenses of fascist rule are sometimes sluggish, ineffectual and even nonexistent. As Brody observes, in its first 18 years, the Worldwide Felony Court Docket in The Hague, the everlasting international tribunal for battle crimes, genocide and crimes towards humanity, “secured solely three ultimate convictions of insurgent warlords, not heads of state.” Within the absence of sturdy worldwide motion to redress human rights abuses, the victims, attorneys and activists propelling the case towards Habre needed to pioneer their very own path to justice.

Habre, born right into a Chadian shepherd household, confirmed his style for brutality within the Nineteen Seventies as a guerrilla commander within the nation’s northern desert. However President Ronald Reagan, who got here into workplace in 1981 with a tough line on terrorism, had recognized Habre as a counterweight to the unpredictable Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, Chad’s neighbor to the north; to comprise Gaddafi, Reagan offered covert money and arms to Habre, giving him the firepower to take management of Chad in a coup in 1982.

Excessive-ranking Reagan administration officers have been conscious of Habre’s penchant for violence, however the White Home stood firmly behind its man. After an Oval Workplace assembly with Habre in 1987, Reagan praised him for what he referred to as Habre’s dedication to “constructing a greater life for the Chadian folks,” including that america “will proceed to do our greatest, to work with France and different steadfast companions within the worldwide effort to assist attain President Habre’s laudatory targets.”

When Brody dove into the case a decade after Habre’s ouster, he had a big profile as a strategist, fundraiser and counsel with a serious human rights group. A longtime activist who sought to uncover atrocities around the globe, he coveted the eye of journalists and filmmakers. He concedes, “I can’t deny that I like seeing myself within the media.” However African historical past and cultural sensitivities demanded that Brody rein himself in. “As an outdoor actor I wanted to tread with humility and keep away from reproducing a postcolonial hierarchy,” he writes. Brody knew he needed to sidestep coming throughout as a consultant, as he places it, of “the ‘savages, victims, and saviors’ assemble, through which white activists rescue black victims from black perpetrators.” He was additionally “keenly conscious of the contradictions of being an American lawyer searching for to prosecute an American-backed dictator.”

Whereas his intuition was to attempt to management all the pieces, Brody accepted that he wanted to cede the highlight to his African companions. “Chad was their nation, their historical past, their future,” he writes. “My African companions and I had to determine methods to unfold possession of the marketing campaign.” That meant placing Chadian attorneys, activists and, most vital, victims heart stage. Habre’s cruelty would emerge most powerfully by way of the tales of those that suffered. “The case,” Brody writes, was about “giving the victims a way to assert their dignity.”

Souleymane Guengueng, an accountant who had been locked up in Chad for 3 years on false costs of aiding the opposition, fashioned an affiliation of victims to gather their tales and start efforts to convey the despot to trial. In jail, Guengueng had eaten one meal a day, contracted dengue fever and malaria, may barely stand, and was overwhelmed by the stench of human waste and decomposing corpses within the cells. In 110-degree warmth, some prisoners sought reduction through the use of the chilly corpses as pillows. Guengueng “took an oath earlier than God that if he ever acquired out of jail alive, he would spend the remainder of his days preventing to convey his oppressors to justice,” Brody writes.

Chadian lawyer Jacqueline Moudeïna, who survived an assassination try, filed felony complaints on behalf of the victims and assumed a outstanding function all through the case. “As quickly as Habré fell from energy in 1990,” Moudeïna writes in a foreword to Brody’s ebook, “I began imagining his trial and imagining, too, that I’d be a part of it.”

Although Habre’s crimes have been uncovered by way of the Chadian fact fee of 1992, progress towards prosecution went nowhere. It wasn’t till 2000, a decade after Habre’s downfall, {that a} choose in Senegal charged the former Chadian ruler with torture and different crimes. Quickly afterward, Senegal’s new president, Abdoulaye Wade, appointed Habre’s lawyer as his authorized adviser, and the indictment was dismissed. The court docket dominated that Senegal had no jurisdiction over egregious crimes dedicated abroad.

However the resolution ignored a number of vital instances introduced within the Nineties that had proved precisely the alternative. These instances on the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides, and even the arrest of the previous dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, in London, have been introduced below the authorized precept of common jurisdiction, which allows prosecution of perpetrators of probably the most heinous crimes exterior the states through which the crimes have been dedicated. In the identical interval, progress was underway to create the Worldwide Felony Court docket to prosecute genocide, crimes towards humanity and battle crimes when nationwide courts fail to take action.

The importance of common jurisdiction extends past Chad to battle crimes occurring immediately in places such as Ukraine. Whereas Russian President Vladimir Putin could escape justice so long as he’s in workplace, some perpetrators of Russia’s felony actions in Ukraine may discover themselves in a global court docket.

The authorized development additionally augured nicely for the Habre case. “Collectively, with the creation of the ICC, the arrest [of Pinochet] appeared to portend a sea change in holding leaders accountable,” Brody writes.

Including to the grisly private accounts of Chad’s victims, hundreds of paperwork got here to mild in 2001 that straight implicated Habre in torture and prisoner deaths. The phrase “torture” hardly ever appeared within the data, however the descriptions left little doubt. In all, the paperwork contained info on 12,321 victims, 1,208 deaths in detention and 1,265 direct communications to Habre on the standing of 898 prisoners. Some paperwork have been marked with what gave the impression to be Habre’s handwriting, indicating that the previous president had been totally apprised of the torture and killings. With proof of Habre’s complicity, Brody writes, “we may, in authorized parlance, ascribe ‘command duty’ to him and use it as a foundation for charging and convicting him.”

Nonetheless, months changed into years till, in September 2005, a Belgian choose, Daniel Fransen, indicted Habre for the second time. Underneath the regulation of common jurisdiction, he sought the previous despot’s extradition to Belgium for trial. The transfer roiled sensitivities in Senegal, the place “the Senegalese didn’t recognize the notion that they have been being informed what to do,” Brody writes. “The concept a European colonial energy would search to prosecute an African president struck a uncooked nerve.” On attraction, the Senegalese court docket denied the Belgian request.

The ruling stirred momentum for a potential African resolution below the course of the African Union, a physique of states working to advertise unity throughout the continent, defend sovereignty and eradicate colonialism. When the African Union mandated that Senegal ought to prosecute Habre, President Wade lastly fell into line now that “he had the total weight of the African Union behind him,” Brody explains.

Though the case plodded ahead, the ebook strikes alongside at a great clip in pretty transient chapters recounting the authorized and political twists and turns, constructing suspense, and inflicting a reader to marvel: Will any of this persistence ever end in justice?

Brody’s obsession with Habre proves a detriment to his marriage, which collapses. Because the case drags on into 2010, Brody measures the passage of time with a vivid analogy: “My son Zac was born when Habré was arrested for the primary time [in 2000]; he was 5 when Belgium requested his extradition, 6 when the African Union ordered Senegal to host the trial, and so forth. Now Zac was 10.”

Ultimately, in 2013, Habre was arrested and indicted to face trial earlier than a tribunal referred to as the Extraordinary African Chambers, established by the African Union particularly for his case. However the former despot refused to acknowledge the chambers’ jurisdiction and declared that his preliminary compelled presence in court docket was a kidnapping. When his trial lastly opened, in July 2015, dozens of his supporters swarmed the courtroom chanting slogans. Habre sprang up and shouted with them till guards dragged him out whereas he cried: “This can be a farce! This can be a farce!” When he refused to return to the courtroom the next day, Senegalese guards carried him in “kicking and screaming, like a petulant little one,” Brody recounts. Throughout the trial, the previous president “sat in a trancelike silence,” Brody observes, “by no means turning to face the witnesses.” His physique was wrapped in a white boubou, and a turban hid his total face, aside from a pair of enormous, darkish sun shades.

The testimony was vivid and unsettling. Mahamat Nour Dadji was 17 when he was hustled off to the political police headquarters. What he noticed shocked him: brokers utilizing pliers to tear out a person’s fingernails; a prisoner along with his legs and arms tied behind his again in a type of torture referred to as the arbatachar.

Clément Abaifouta, who spent 4 years in jail, recounted tossing lifeless inmates onto a truck and burying them in a mass grave that turned referred to as the Plain of the Useless.

Khadidja Hassan Zidane described her ruined life: the execution of her husband, the torture of her mom, the seizure of her household’s property. She pointed to 2 spots on her head the place brokers unleashed bursts of electrical present and confirmed electrocution scars on her chest. Zidane additionally had a long-held secret. Overcoming her disgrace, she informed the court docket she was enslaved at a desert air base the place she and different ladies have been raped repeatedly by Habre’s troopers — and by the president himself.

In Might 2016, after greater than 20 years of luxurious exile, Habre was discovered responsible of torture, battle crimes and crimes towards humanity, and of being a part of a “joint felony enterprise” to torture and kill opponents. He was additionally convicted of rape, however that ruling was overturned on attraction as a result of that cost was not included within the unique indictment. Each different judgment stood.

“This was it,” Brody writes. “Full victory. The enjoyment was indescribable.”

Although Brody comes throughout at occasions as a person in want of glory, he discovered to look past his personal contributions. “An African court docket had discovered an African dictator responsible of atrocious crimes … because of a marketing campaign mounted by his African victims,” he notes within the epilogue.

Sentenced to life in jail, Habre stored scheming for his freedom till his dying on Aug. 24, 2021.

Convicting Habre was a masterful success. Simply as vital was the following step: depositing the murderous dictator in jail. Different despots convicted of crimes towards humanity, even after years of evading justice, by no means spend a day in jail. Contemplate Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was Ethiopia’s head of state from 1977 to 1991, when he fled the nation. Believed chargeable for as many as 2 million deaths throughout his rule, Mengistu was convicted of genocide in absentia in Ethiopia in 2006. The court docket verdict is unenforced: Mengistu lives free in Zimbabwe.

Guatemala’s dictator Efrain Rios Montt got here to energy in a coup in 1982, and inside three months of his barbarous rule some 10,000 folks have been slaughtered. He was deposed after 17 months in energy. Thirty years later, in 2013, he was convicted of genocide in a Guatemalan court docket. The decision was rapidly annulled on a technicality, and Rios Montt died earlier than a retrial was accomplished. The previous president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, had been in energy for 20 years in 2009 when he was indicted by the Worldwide Felony Court docket for his function in mass killings and rape in Darfur starting in 2003. Ignoring the ICC, which Sudan didn’t acknowledge, Bashir remained Sudan’s chief till he was ousted in a coup in 2019.

Although it took lengthy and got here at a price, Chadians tasted justice whereas many victims in different nations haven’t. Habre was lastly locked away nearly 35 years after his bloody reign started. Some victims didn’t stay lengthy sufficient to see the end result. As we speak, many survivors stay in poverty, struggling bodily and emotional scars, and have but to see any promised compensation from the thousands and thousands of {dollars} Habre looted from his nation.

But lawyer Moudeïna sees a lesson in all of the struggling. What she and her fellow Chadians completed has set a precedent that “is now inspiring victims of abominable crimes in locations just like the Gambia, the Central African Republic, and Côte d’Ivoire,” Moudeïna writes in her foreword. “For us, the Habré case is a supply of giant satisfaction, the primary milestone in a wider combat.”

Steven Levingston is nonfiction editor of The Washington Put up and writer of “Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership” and “Kennedy and King: The President, the Pastor, and the Battle Over Civil Rights.”

The Pursuit and Trial of Hissène Habré

Columbia College Press. 279 pp. $32