Court to rule on detention of Chad ex-leader

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is to rule Monday on a Belgian request that Senegal be ordered to prevent former Chadian president Hissene Habre from leaving the country.

Belgium filed charges in 2000 and 2001 alleging war crimes by Habre during his 1982-1990 presidency of Chad.

In February, Belgium asked the court, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, to order Senegal either to put Habre on trial or extradite him.

As a final ruling could take several years, Belgium has asked the court to take "protective measures" to ensure that Habre, who is living under supervision in the Senegalese capital Dakar, "remains under the control and surveillance of the Senegalese judicial authorities."

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said recently that his country would lift the surveillance of Habre, who took refuge in Senegal in 1990, if it could not find the 27.5 million dollars that it estimated it would cost to organise a trial. Possible donors think the sum is excessive.

"Without the pressure from Belgium we are afraid all the victims will die before justice is done," Reed Brody, spokesman for the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch, told AFP.

A Chadian committee of inquiry found that Habre's regime was responsible for more than 40,000 deaths among his political opponents and some ethnic groups..

Following the allegations, Habre was charged in Dakar in 2000 with complicity in crimes against humanity, acts of torture and savagery.

But the charge was rejected on the grounds that Senegalese law does not cover crimes against humanity.

The present Senegalese justice minister is Madicke Niang, who was Habre's lawyer, and he has not executed an international arrest warrant issued by Belgium in September 2005.

Senegal was mandated by the African Union in July 2006 to put Habre on trial and has initiated legislative reforms that would allow it to prosecute him. But no criminal procedure has started.

But "the Hissene Habre case is a golden opportunity for Africa to show it can put on trial its own tyrants," Brody said.

"You cannot say that Senegal has not made an effort," a Senegalese source familiar with the case told AFP.

"But if justice is to be carried out in proper conditions, there is a price to pay."

In its request to the ICJ Belgium says that "Senegal is not fulfilling its obligation to punish crimes against humanity."