Former Chadian president Hissène Habré, 79, died of COVID-19on the 24th of August in Senegal where he was serving a life sentence for war crimes
Habré, who ruled Chad from 1982 to 1990, was a brutal dictator under whose reign tens of thousands of people were executed, tortured, or jailed. On 30 May 2016, the Extraordinary African Chambers found Habré guilty of rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people during his tenure as Chadian president and sentenced him to life in prison in the Prison du Cap Manuel in Senegal where he spent his final years.
Reed Brody, a lawyer who represented Habré’s victims, said in a statement on Tuesday that there had been calls for the former leader to be vaccinated against the virus.
He nonetheless added that Habré will “go down in history as one of the world’s most pitiless dictators, a man who slaughtered his own people to seize and maintain power”.
