OUP is publishing a new book on
the Hissène Habré trial.
ABOUT THE BOOK
During the 1980s, thousands of
Chadian citizens were detained, tortured, and raped by then-President Hissène
Habré's security forces. Decades later, Habré was finally prosecuted for his
role in these atrocities not in his own country or in The Hague, but across the
African continent, at the Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegal. By some
accounts, Habré's trial and conviction by a specially built court in Dakar is
the most significant achievement of global criminal justice in the past decade.
Simply creating a court and commencing a trial against a deposed head of state
was an extraordinary success. With its 2016 judgment, affirmed on appeal in
2017, the hybrid tribunal in Senegal exceeded expectations, working to
deadlines and within its budget, with no murdered witnesses or self-dealing
officials.
This book details and contextualizes the Habré trial. It presents the trial and
its impact using a novel structure of first-person accounts from 26 direct
actors (Part I), accompanied by academic analysis from leading experts on
international criminal justice (Part II). Combined, these views present both
local and international perspectives through distinct but inter-locking parts:
empirical source material from understudied actors both within and outside the
court is then contextualized with expert analysis that reflects on the
construction and work of: the Extraordinary African Chamber (EAC) as well as
wider themes of international criminal law. Together with an introduction
laying out the work and significance of the EAC and its trial of Hissène Habré,
the book is a comprehensive consideration of a history-making trial.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Dr. Sharon Weill is Assistant
Professor at The American University of Paris and a Senior Lecturer in
international law and associate researcher at Sciences-Po, Paris (PSIA/CERI).
Her particular field of interest is the relationship between international and
domestic law, the politics of international law and the role of courts- topics
on which she has published several articles and book chapters. Her
post-doctoral research on the Guantanamo Bay military commissions was conducted
at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California,
Berkeley (2015-2016). Prior to that, she participated in the European research
project "Security in Transition" led by Professor Mary Kaldor (London
School of Economic), and was a research fellow at the Geneva Academy of
International Humanitarian and Human rights law for several years. She received
her PhD in international law from the University of Geneva in 2012.
Kim Thuy Seelinger, JD, is
Research Associate Professor at the Brown School and Visiting Professor of Law,
Washington University in St. Louis, where she is also the inaugural director of
the cross-disciplinary Center for Human Rights, Gender, and Migration under the
Institute of Public Health. From 2010-2019, Seelinger served as the founding
Director of the Sexual Violence Program at the Human Rights Center at the
University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she remains a Research
Fellow. In 2015, she co-authored an amicus curiae brief on sexual violence
under customary international law in the Habré case. Seelinger received her JD
from New York University School of Law and is a member of the New York bar.
Dr Kerstin Bree Carlson is
Associate Professor in the Law Department of the University of Southern
Denmark, where she teaches in the Masters of International Security and Law
program. She is also affiliated with The American University of Paris and
iCourts at the University of Copenhagen. Carlson began her work on the Habré
trial in 2015 as a post-doctoral researcher at iCourts at the University of
Copenhagen, and did extensive field research in Dakar. Carlson received her JD
and PhD degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword, Denis Mukwege, 2018
Nobel Peace Prize Co-recipient
Introduction
Part I. The Trial as Told by its
Actors
Editors' Introduction
A. Early Prosecution Attempts
(1982-2012)
1. The 'Archives of Terror',
Olivier Bercault
2. The Making of Chad's Truth
Commission, Judge Abakar Mahamat Hassan
3. Documenting Crimes and
Organizing Victims in Chad, Souleymane Guengueng
4. Tenacity, Perseverance, and
Imagination in the 'Private International Prosecution' of Hissène Habré, Reed
Brody
5. Defending Habré in Senegal
During the Early Years, Hélene Cissé
6. The Belgian Investigation of
the Habré Regime, Excerpt of EAC trial testimony of Daniel Fransen, Belgian
Investigating Judge
7. In His Own Words: An Interview
with Hissène Habré, Excerpted interview from La Gazette, Dakar, 2011
B. Establishing the Court
8. Creating the EAC in Senegal:
Perspectives from the African Union, Ben Kioko
9. Arresting Habré, Marcel Mendy
10. Investigations in Senegal and
Chad: Cooperation and Challenges, Judge Jean Kandé
11. Managing the EAC, Amadou
Mokhtar Seck
12. Professionalizing a Political
Trial: A Clerk's Perspective, Abouly Ba
C. The Trial
13. Prosecuting International
Crimes in Senegal, Mbacke Fall
14. Defending Habré, Mounir
Ballal
15. From Victim to Witness and
the Challenges of Sexual Violence Testimony, Jacqueline Moudeina
16. Supporting Victims at Trial:
Civil Parties' Perspective, Alain Werner and Emmanuelle Marchand
17. Can we be friends? Offering
an Amicus Curiae Brief to the EAC, Kim Thuy Seelinger, Naomi Fenwick, Khaled
Alrabe
18. The Habré Trial Judgement: A
Summary of the First Instance Judgements of the EAC, Elise Le Gall
19. The Habré Appeals Decision: A
Summary of the Appeal Decision of the EAC, Elise Le Gall
20. Reflections on the Habré
Appeals Decision, Judge Ouagadeye Wafi
21. The Real Fight Begins; Victims
Struggle for an Effective Right to Reparation, Gaëlle Carayon and Jeanne Sulzer
D. Beyond the Courtroom
22. A Donor's Perspective, Sarah
Valentina Fall
23. Outreach for the EAC: An
Extraordinary Experience, Franck Petit
24. Covering Habré: The Diary of
a Local Journalist, Ngoundji Dieng
25. Prosecutions in Chad, Henri
Thulliez
26. Academia as Partner in the
Habré Trial, Érick Sullivan and Fannie Lafontaine
Part II. Reflections on the
Significance of the Habré Case and Beyond
Editors' Introduction
A. Portraits, Positionality,
Paradigms
27. Africa Against Global
Justice? Stakes for Building a Political Sociology on the Futures of
International Criminal Justice, Sara Dezalay
28. The Habré trial and the
Malabo Protocol: An Emerging African Criminal Justice?, Ndeye Amy Ndiaye
29. Expertise in the Bench? The
Dis-Embeddedness of International Criminal Justice, Julien Seroussi
30. Hybrid Justice and the Rights
of the Defence: Existence at the Periphery, Dov Jacobs
B. Institutions, Norms, and
Pillars
31. Hybrid: A Spectrum of
Possibilities, Mark Kersten and Kirsten Ainley
32. "Civil Law" v.
"Common Law" Criminal Procedure: The Key or the Lock for ICL Success,
Leila Bourguiba
33. The ICJ's Senegal v. Belgium
Judgment and the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite Alleged Torturers: The
Case of Al Bashir and the ICC, Manuel Ventura and Victor Baiesu
34. Victims as a Third Party at
the ICCL Empowerment of Victims?, Liesbeth Zegveld
C. Capturing the Judicial
Process: Actors and Dynamics
35. "We Will Not Go Away":
The Participation of Victims in International Criminal Tribunals, Eric Stover
and Stephen Cody
36. Reparations and the Habré
Trial in Context, Christophe Sperfeldt
37. Hybrid Courts and Amicus
Curiae Briefing, Sarah Williams
38. "Sexualized
Slavery" and Customary International Law, Patricia Sellers and Jocelyn
Kestenbaum
39. Witness Protection, Nancy
Combs
D. The Political and its
Interaction: Captured Institutions?
40. Hissène Habré, the Little
Bird on the Brance, and the Challenges of International Criminal Justice,
Pierre Hazan
41. The ICC and Africa, Richard
Goldstone
42. The 'Habré Effect', Universal
Jurisdiction and Courts in Africa, Mia Swart
43. Main Challenges and the
Future of International Criminal Law, William Schabas
