»Die Zeit für Gerechtigkeit ist gekommen«

In 1985, a young Chadian student, Sabadet Totodet, received a scholarship to study medicine abroad from the Union nationale démocratique (UND), a political movement opposed to the government of President Hissène Habré.

On July 12, 1985, the day before his scheduled departure, an agent of the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), the government’s political police, arrested Sabadet. He was accused of helping prepare an armed rebellion against Hissène Habré, who had seized power three years earlier.

Police held Sabadet at DDS headquarters for just over two weeks, in a cell infested with lice and insects. Detainees were forced to urinate and defecate in the cell itself, and could barely lie down because it was so crowded. At the end of July, Sabadet was transferred to a jail known as the Locaux, ‘The Premises,’ one of many prisons that formed an archipelago of death in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena. He remained there for nearly four years.

At the Locaux, Sabadet was required to perform numerous tasks, including managing food inventories, and preparing food for DDS prison detainees. He also served as a nursing assistant for detainees, with the little medicine available. The young man who had once dreamed of becoming a doctor was now also forced to bury the dead. Almost every day, Sabadet hauled corpses of fellow detainees from cells—victims of poor detention conditions, extrajudicial killings, or torture—loaded them into DDS vehicles, and dug mass graves—dozens of them—outside N’Djamena at the sinister Hamral-Goz site, now known as the Plaine des Morts, or “Plain of the Dead.” He then had to unceremoniously toss in the bodies.

One day, as Sabadet and his fellow detainees were digging yet another grave at the Plaine des Morts, he came across a bit of cloth sticking out of the ground. He immediately recognized the print of the traditional pagne worn by a co-detainee at the Locaux, Rose Lokissim, a woman widely respected at the prison for her courage and determination.

Rose Lokissim was detained in several different cells in 1984, including one nicknamed the Cellule de la Mort, or “Cell of Death.” According to some survivors, it was the cell from which “no one gets out alive.” It was also the cell that held the largest number of prisoners, almost all men. On a typical day, between 50 and 60 detainees were crammed into a space of approximately 102 square meters. Sometimes, as many as 100 people were forced into the cell.

Despite the risks, Rose decided to make it her mission to ensure that the fate of the prisoners of the DDS would become known to the outside world. With the help of a few jailers, she arranged for information about some of the detainees to be transmitted to their families. Rose would also write down on cigarette paper the names of the prisoners, those who died and those who disappeared, to create a detailed record so that the victims would not be forgotten. Her courage did not go unnoticed, however, and one day she was denounced. Hawa Brahim Mardié, a former detainee at the Locaux, recalls:

One day, they searched her and discovered the papers. The soldiers grabbed a pick and a shovel and took her to the car…. Afterwards, we learned that they had placed a rope around her neck and pulled it from both sides to strangle her.

In the written report of Rose’s interrogation dated May 15, 1986, which Human Rights Watch recovered in 2001 among tens of thousands of archives from the Habré era, DDS agents transcribed the following statement by Rose, which today has particular resonance:

If I die, it will be for my country and my family, and history will speak of me, and I will be thanked for the service I have provided to the Chadian nation.

Sabadet was finally released on March 7, 1989, following a series of agreements between Hissène Habré’s government and certain opposition parties and armed groups. After his release, the DDS asked him to return to prison as a “spy” to gather information about other detainees, but he refused. He was never able to follow his dream of studying medicine.

After current president Idriss Déby Itno deposed Habré in 1990, Sabadet committed himself to seeking justice for the victims of the government, and worked with the newly formed victims’ association. He died in 2002 of alcoholism, a condition he developed after his traumatic experiences in detention and a life shattered by years lost in prison.

On February 8, 2013, after 23 years of campaigning by Habré’s victims, the “Extraordinary African Chambers within the courts of Senegal created to prosecute international crimes committed in Chad between 7 June 1982 and 1 December 1990” established by agreement between the African Union and Senegal, where Habré lives in exile, began its work. On July 2, the chambers indicted Hissène Habré for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture.

The time has finally come to obtain justice for Sabadet and Rose and for all the other victims of the Habré era.

Human Rights Watch believes that this report, the contents of which were shared with the prosecutor of the Extraordinary African Chambers after it was established in February 2013, contains critical information in relation to Habré’s direct involvement in the worst crimes committed in Chad between 1982 and 1990.

It is now up to the Extraordinary African Chambers to conduct a fair and credible procedure to determine the “person or persons most responsible for crimes and serious violations of international law, customary international law and international conventions ratified by Chad” in that period.

Criminal investigations are also finally proceeding in Chad against dozens of Habré’s alleged accomplices, based on complaints victims filed in 2001. These cases should also move forward in a fair and credible manner to determine the responsibility of the accused.

Den vollständigen Bericht (franz. Originalfassung) finden Sie hier.