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Senegal court declines to rule on Habre extradition

Posted on: Friday, 25 November 2005, 11:59 CST

By Diadie Ba

DAKAR (Reuters) - Senegal's Appeals Court on Friday declined to rule on whether to extradite former Chad President Hissene Habre to Belgium on atrocities charges, and his lawyers said he would be freed from custody.

The court in Dakar declared itself "not competent" to rule on the Belgian request for Habre's extradition to face charges of torture and political killings committed during his eight years in power in Chad.

The announcement threw the high-profile extradition case into what appeared to be a legal limbo. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade was considering making a statement on the case in the next few days, sources at the presidency said.

Lawyers for Habre, 63, who has lived in exile in Senegal for 15 years and was detained last week under an international warrant from Belgium, said Habre would be freed from custody.

"He's packing his bags to go home," lawyer Doudou Ndoye told Reuters. There was no immediate confirmation from Senegalese authorities.

As he was driven away from the court in a police vehicle, Habre, wearing a white robe and cap, waved to supporters, some of whom shouted "We've won."

Habre's lawyers called the Senegalese court's statement a setback for the Belgian request which holds the former Chad ruler responsible for mass murder and torture carried out by his political police between 1982 and 1990.

But lawyers representing former Chad political prisoners accusing Habre, some of whom have Belgian citizenship, said they believed the ruling had not closed the door on extradition.

His case has stirred up a complex international debate over whether former heads of state wanted for human rights crimes should be judged in the courts of nations other then their own.

"The court ... declares itself not competent in the case of the extradition of Hissene Habre," the Appeals Court said.

"The (former) head of state Hissene Habre has done nothing which merits him being judged in another country. Senegal has just shown that no African head of state will be prosecuted in Belgium," Habre's lawyer Ndoye said.

His lawyers have said their client had no knowledge that his police tortured and killed political prisoners.

But lawyers representing the victims said the appeals court had not definitively thrown out the extradition request.

"DOOR STILL OPEN"

"We're looking at the ruling and, contrary to what you might expect, the door is still open," Belgian lawyer Georges-Henri Beauthier told Reuters in Brussels.

Lawyers said they believed Senegalese President Wade might take the final decision on the extradition.

The case poses a prickly diplomatic dilemma for Wade. He said last week he would consult the African Union on whether or not to hand over the former Chadian president, dubbed "Africa's Pinochet" by human rights lawyers.

Habre was ousted by current Chadian President Idriss Deby in 1990. Two years later, a Chadian government inquiry accused Habre's government of 40,000 political killings and 200,000 cases of torture.

In a visit to Brussels on Thursday, Deby urged Wade to extradite Habre to Belgium, saying the Senegalese leader had previously said he would do so if requested.

Diplomats said Wade may be reluctant to set the precedent of extraditing an African former head of state to a European ex-colonial power like Belgium. Historians have accused Belgian colonial authorities of committing widespread atrocities during their rule over the Congo until independence in 1960.

But the Senegalese president risks international censure if he is seen to be sheltering a former ruler accused of major human rights violations.

"The question is, is Senegal going to align itself with a former dictator and trample on the rights of thousands of victims who have been fighting for 15 years to find a court that will listen to their suffering?" said Reed Brody, a lawyer with U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

The Belgian government has said that if Senegal denies Habre's extradition, it will invoke international conventions against torture signed by both states, and may even take the case to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

In 2000, a court in Senegal charged Habre with torture and crimes against humanity but later ruled he could not be tried in the country.

(Additional reporting by Gilles Castonguay in Brussels)

Source: REUTERS

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