Now that former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been flown off the continent to face charges of war crimes at The Hague, West Africans are turning their attention to another African leader who faces prosecution away from home.
Ex-Chadian president Hissene Habre, who has been living in exile in Senegal since 1990, is waiting for the African Union to determine his fate during its annual summit next month in the Gambian capital Banjul.
Habre is accused of murder, torture and other atrocities inflicted on thousands of people. Alleged victims of his eight-year regime filed charges of war crimes against him in Senegal and he was indicted in 2000. Later, though, Senegalese courts ruled that he must be tried elsewhere.
Habre’s alleged victims turned to Belgium, where some of them lived, and Belgium indicted him last September. But a Senegalese court early this year said it was not competent to rule on the case and turned the decision over to the AU.
Western nations and international donors are increasingly giving aid on the basis of respect for human rights and good governance. Analysts consider impunity to be a major impediment to development. They say that without justice there is no security, no rule of law, no transparency and little respect for human rights.
Governments appear to have taken note. ”I think there has been a real sea change,” said Reed Brody, special counsel for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
”I think the days when tyrants could brutalise their people and pillage their treasury and then meet up with their bank accounts in some other country are gone,” Brody said. ”The question of justice is always on the table. One of the big resistances has been that of African leaders.”
But Brody said that the decision by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to hand Taylor over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone last year might have broken a psychological barrier in terms of impunity for African leaders. Taylor had been living in exile in Nigeria since he was deposed in August 2003.
Local human rights advocates are more cynical. ”For the moment we can’t say that things have changed regarding the violation of human rights in Africa. There has been no court decision yet regarding Charles Taylor and the case of Hissene Habre is still being discussed,” said Fatou Kama, a lawyer with the Dakar-based African Meeting for the Defense of Human Rights.
”We can say there is an awareness — at least there is that. Today, African leaders know that they might appear in court and answer to accusations of human rights abuses,” Kama said.
The momentum for ending impunity in Africa began in 1994 with two pivotal events: the Rwandan genocide and the end of apartheid in South Africa. South Africa established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Rwanda and the United Nations formed the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try suspected perpetrators of the genocide. Other nations took note.
Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone are among countries that established truth commissions to heal the wounds inflicted under military regimes or during civil wars.
With the backing of the United Nations, the Special Court for Sierra Leone was established. It indicted Taylor and retains jurisdiction, but the trial will be held at The Hague because of fears that Taylor might attempt to destabilise the West African sub-region from his jail cell.
Although Taylor and Habre have recently grabbed headlines because of the international angle to their cases, they are not the only African leaders to face the courts. Others have been summoned to tribunals in their own countries. They include Moussa Traore of Mali and Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic.
Traore was jailed for 11 years with his wife, Mariam, on corruption charges. They had been sentenced to death but the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. They were pardoned in 2002.
Bokassa was arrested in 1986 and tried for treason, murder and embezzlement. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and then to 20 years. He was released in 1993 under a general amnesty.
Ethiopia has been trying former leader Mengistu Haile Mariam in absentia on charges of genocide. A verdict has been postponed until next year. Mengistu has been living in exile in Zimbabwe since 1991.
As the reformed Organisation of African Unity, the AU has sought to distance itself from its post-colonial predecessor’s reputation as a ”dictators’ club”. The AU is establishing an African Court on Human and People’s Rights, based in Arusha, Tanzania, comprising 11 judges from around the continent.