Hissène Habré



Hissène Habré is a former Chadian dictator ruling from 1982 to his deposal in 1990. His one party regime was characterized by widespread human rights abuses and atrocities. He denies killing and torturing tens of thousands of his opponents although in 2012, the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Senegal to put him on trial or extradite him to face justice overseas.

Following his rise to power, Habré created a secret police force known as the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), under which opponents of Habré were tortured and executed.Some methods of torture commonly used by the DDS included; burning with incandescent objects, spraying of gas into the eyes, ears, and nose; forced swallowing of water, and forcing the mouths of detainees around the exhaust pipes of running cars. Habré's government periodically engaged in ethnic cleansing against groups such as the Sara, Hadjerai and the Zaghawa, killing and arresting group members in masses when it perceived that their leaders posed a threat to the regime. This gave him the nickname "Africa's Pinochet