President on Trial - Prosecuting Hissene Habre

This book details and contextualizes the trial of Hissène Habré, who was prosecuted by a court in Senegal for his role in atrocities committed against Chadian citizens during the 1980s. It employs an innovative combination of first-person accounts from direct actors and academic analysis from leading experts on international criminal justice.

List of contents

• Foreword, Denis Mukwege, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Co-recipient
  


• Hissène Habré on Trial: Mapping the Long Road to Justice (Sharon Weill, Kim Thuy Seelinger, and Kerstin Carlson)
  


• Part I. The Trial as Told by its Actors


• Editors' Introduction
  


• A. Early Prosecution Attempts (1982-2012)
  


• 1: The 'Archives of Terror', Olivier Bercault, Human Rights Watch coordinator of the case (2000- 2008).


• 2: The Making of Chad's Truth Commission, Judge Abakar Mahamat Hassan, President of the Chadian Truth Commission


• 3: Documenting Crimes and Organizing Victims in Chad, Souleymane Guengueng, Founder of the Association of Victims of Political Repression in Chad


• 4: Tenacity, Perseverance, and Imagination in the 'Private International Prosecution' of Hissène Habré, Reed Brody, Senior Counsel with Human Rights Watch and architect of Chadian victims' long campaign for justice


• 5: Defending Habré in Senegal During the Early Years, Hélene Cissé, member of Habré's defence team in the first domestic proceedings in Senegal (1999-2001)


• 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, Former Legal Counsel to the Commission of the African Union and judge on the African Court on Human and People's Rights


• 9: Arresting Habré, Marcel Mendy, Coordinator of the EAC Communications Unit


• 10: Investigations in Senegal and Chad: Cooperation and Challenges, Judge Jean Kandé, Investigating judge at the EAC


• 11: Managing the EAC, Amadou Mokhtar Seck, EAC Administration and Finance Office


• 12: Professionalizing a Political Trial: A Clerk's Perspective, Abouly Ba, clerk at the EAC
  


• C. The Trial
  


• 13: Prosecuting International Crimes in Senegal, Mbacke Fall, EAC Prosecutor


• 14: Defending Habré, Mounir Ballal, court-appointed defense lawyer before the EAC


• 15: From Victim to Witness and the Challenges of Sexual Violence Testimony, Jacqueline Moudeina, Victims' Legal Counsel before the EAC


• 16: Supporting Victims at Trial: Civil Parties' Perspective, Alain Werner and Emmanuelle Marchand, Legal consultants for Civil Parties during the trial


• 17: Can we be friends? Offering an Amicus Curiae Brief to the EAC, Kim Thuy Seelinger, Naomi Fenwick, Khaled Alrabe, UC Berkeley


• 18: The Habré Trial Judgement: A Summary of the First Instance Judgements of the EAC, Elise Le Gall, International Criminal Law expert with the EAC Office of the Prosecutor


• 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, EAC Appeals Chamber


• 21: The Real Fight Begins; Victims Struggle for an Effective Right to Reparation, Gaëlle Carayon and Jeanne Sulzer (Redress/FIDH)
  


• D. Beyond the Courtroom
  


• 22: A Donor's Perspective, Sarah Valentina Fall, Human Rights and Human Security program, Swiss Embassy in Dakar


• 23: Outreach for the EAC: An Extraordinary Experience, Franck Petit, team leader for the Outreach Consortium on the EAC


• 24: Covering Habré: The Diary of a Local Journalist, Ngoundji Dieng, Senegalese Journalist for Senegalese daily, The Quotidien


• 25: Prosecutions in Chad, Henri Thulliez, Senior coordinator for Human Rights Watch


• 26: Academia as Partner in the Habré Trial, Érick Sullivan and Fannie Lafontaine, The Clinic for International Criminal and Humanitarian Law (CDIPH), Laval University, Canada
  


• 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

About the author

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.

Summary

This book details and contextualizes the trial of Hissène Habré, who was prosecuted by a court in Senegal for his role in atrocities committed against Chadian citizens during the 1980s. It employs an innovative combination of first-person accounts from direct actors and academic analysis from leading experts on international criminal justice.

Additional text

At a time when we are told that international criminal justice cannot work - this it is too weak, too slow, expensive, too disillusioning - this book stands for the proposition that it can work and has worked. In a novel and innovative study, the three author-editors bring the voices of participants to the fore, and in so doing reveal how it was possible to hold a powerful head of state to account for a multiplicity of heinous crimes. It is at once a moving account of a singularly important trial, and a model of scholarship.

Product details

• Authors: Sharon (Assistant Professor Weill
• Assisted by: Kerstin Bree Carlson (Editor), Kerstin Bree (Associate Professor in the Law Department Carlson (Editor), Kim Thuy Seelinger (Editor), Kim (Research Associate Professor at the Brown School Thuy Seelinger (Editor), Sharon Weill (Editor), Sharon (Assistant Professor Weill (Editor), Weill Sharon (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2020
• EAN: 9780198858621
• ISBN: 978-0-19-885862-1
• No. of pages: 460
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Law > International law, foreign law; LAW / Courts, LAW / International, LAW / Criminal Law / Sentencing, International Criminal Law, Public international law: criminal law, Law & society, Law and society, sociology of law, International law: courts and procedures, International courts & procedures