Macky Sall . Under Sall ’ s leadership , Senegal and the African Union created special chambers within the Senegalese court system , which in July 2013 again indicted Habré and finally paved the way for his trial . It was the first time in history that the courts of one country , Senegal , prosecuted the former leader of another , Chad , for human rights crimes .
The victims ’ mobilization also led to a trial in Chad that , on March 25 , 2015 , convicted 20 Habréera security agents on charges of murder , torture , kidnapping and arbitrary detention . The court sentenced seven men to life in prison , including Saleh Younous , the former director of the DDS , and Mahamat Djibrine , described as one of the “ most feared torturers in Chad ” by the Truth Commission . In addition to reparations , the court ordered the government to erect a monument to those who were killed under Habré and to turn the former DDS headquarters into a museum . These were both among the long-standing demands of the victims ’ associations . Seven years after the court decision , however , the Chadian government has not implemented any of these compensatory measures .
In the run-up to Habré ’ s trial in Senegal , Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet produced the documentary Talking about Rose , narrated by the French actress Juliette Binoche , which told the story of the courageous Rose Lokissim . The film was first shown to a packed audience in Chad during the trial there and introduced Rose ’ s story to a Chadian public that had not heard of her before .
After the film , the Humanity United Foundation in California created “ Rose Lokissim Grants ” for reporters to travel to Chad and Senegal and cover the Habré case . Their stories about the trial wound up in the New York Times , The Guardian , and El País , among other publications , bringing Rose ’ s story and the victims ’ struggle to an even larger audience .
Habré ’ s trial finally began in July 2015 in Dakar , and was streamed on the internet , televised in Chad and uploaded and stored on YouTube .
The DDS documents we had discovered took center stage at the trial , buttressing the testimony of 98 witnesses . A court-appointed handwriting expert confirmed that it was Habré who responded to a request by the International Committee of the Red Cross for the hospitalization of certain prisoners of war by writing « From now on , no prisoner of war can leave the Detention Center except in case of death ». The statistician Patrick Ball presented a study of mortality in Habré ’ s prisons , based on the DDS documents , concluding that prison mortality was « hundreds of times higher than normal mortality for adult men in Chad during the same period » and « substantially higher than some of the twentieth century ’ s worst POW contexts », such as German prisoners of war in Soviet custody and U . S . prisoners of war in Japanese custody .
Numerous prisoners talked about sharing their cells with Rose Lokissim and the court received all the documents detailing her tragic and brave story . The most dramatic testimony at trial came from four women sent to a camp in the desert north of Chad in 1988 who testified that they were used as sexual slaves for the army and that soldiers had repeatedly raped the women in the camp . Two were under 15 at the time . The recovered DDS documents confirmed that women were sent to the desert and record the imprisonment of the four former detainees who testified . One of the women , Khadidja Hassan Zidane , stunned the court when she testified that Habré himself had personally raped her four times in the presidential palace . Kaltouma Deffalah , one of the survivors of sexual slavery , testified defiantly that she felt « strong , very courageous because I am before the man who was strong before in Chad , who … doesn ’ t even speak now , I am really happy to be here today , facing him , to express my pain , I am truly proud ». It was a sentiment expressed , in one way or another , by many of the survivors who testified .
One evening during the trial in Dakar , I had a chance to watch on satellite the Chadian television coverage of the trial and was struck by the idea of thousands of Chadians watching their former dictator in the dock . Habré wasn ’ t in the dock because Chad ’ s current strongman Idriss Déby had so decreed , which was the way things usually happened in Chad . He was there because a group of brave citizens , Ismael Hachim , Sabadet Totodet ,
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Observing Memories Issue 6