Former Chadian President Hissène Habré, who was serving a life sentence in Senegal for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has died, Senegalese Justice Minister Malick Sall announced on Tuesday. He was 79 years old.
“Habréis in the hands of his lord,” Sall told TFM television station, while local media said he had died from Covid-19.
Habré’s eight-year reign over Chad, an impoverished and landlocked country in central Africa, from 1982 to 1990 was marked by a brutal crackdown on dissent in which more than 40,000 people died, investigators say .
After overthrowing Chad, Habré fled to Senegal and for more than 20 years lived freely in a posh suburb of Dakar with his wife and children.
Nicknamed “the Pinochet of Africa”, he was finally arrested in 2013 and tried by a special tribunal set up by the African Union as part of an agreement with Senegal.
He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Dakar in 2016.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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