Habre to remain in Senegal pending decision by African Union

Hissene Habre, the former Chadian leader wanted for crimes against humanity, will be allowed to remain in Senegal until the African Union rules on his judicial fate early next year, Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio said on Sunday. Moving to end two weeks of judicial high drama as well as lively domestic debate over Habre's fate, the minister said Senegal opposed impunity but believed it was the responsibility of the African continent to issue a collective ruling on demands that Habre be brought to account for his alleged crimes. "It is up to the African Union leaders to recommend the jurisdiction competent to judge this matter," Gadio told reporters. "President [Abdoulaye] Wade has said this is an African matter, not strictly Senegalese." Habre, who has lived in exile in Senegal for 15 years, was detained on 15 November nearly two months after a Belgian extradition request on charges of political killings and torture dating back to his term in office from 1982 to 1990. On Friday a Senegalese court declared itself incompetent to rule on the extradition order and sent Habre back home. But the next day he was briefly re-arrested and his lawyers told reporters that the Interior Ministry had given him 48 hours before he would be sent to Nigeria, whose President Olusegun Obasanjo currently holds the rotating presidency of the African Union. On Sunday Gadio said the 48-hour arrest order had been revoked and that Habre would be allowed to stay in Senegal pending the next AU summit due in January in Sudan's capital, Khartoum. The government reversed its decision to send the 63-year-old to Nigeria after hearing pleas from Habre and his lawyers against the move, Gadio said. Habre’s lawyers had said in part that the Interior Ministry’s order was a violation of Habre’s rights and that they would issue an urgent appeal to annul the move. Foreign affairs minister Gadio insisted Senegal is firmly against impunity. "Senegal concluded that all in all - in the fight against impunity in Africa - it was important that this question be part of the agenda of African Union leaders," he said. "And that we ask the African Union what is the position Africa must adopt, what is the position the African Union recommends to Senegal." A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habre of responsibility for 40,000 political killings and mass torture. "This is a dossier that is becoming more and more an injustice regarding Senegal," Gadio told reporters. "These events did not take place in Senegal, Senegal was party to absolutely nothing." "Now the rest of Africa is looking to Senegal for a solution to a problem we did not create....We only granted hospitality to Hissene Habre." While there has been widening opposition in Senegal to the idea of sending Habre to face a court in a former colonial power, Gadio countered talk that Senegal was ignoring alleged victims. "We are against impunity....The cries of those saying they were victims of Habre - their cries have been heard, not only by Wade but by the entire Senegalese people." Human rights lawyers said at the weekend that it was essential that Habre be delivered to Belgium in a legal manner. "What's important is that Hissene Habre answer for the acts of which he is accused, in a just and equitable process," Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch said in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. The ruling of incompetence on Friday marked the second time a Senegalese court has declined to rule on Habre's alleged atrocities. In 2000, a Senegalese court charged him with torture and crimes against humanity, but the following year the country's highest court ruled that the ex-president could not be judged in Senegal for acts allegedly carried out in another country. Chadians living in Belgium later filed suit against Habre under Belgium's "universal jurisdiction" law, which allows for prosecution of crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world. The law was later revoked, but the Habre case was one of a handful already underway and allowed to continue. A trial would break ground in efforts to bring former leaders to justice.