Call to fund dictator's trial
2007-07-26 20:57
Dakar - President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal on Thursday appealed for international help to fund the trial of former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre on charges of crimes against humanity.
"This trial will cost a lot of money, I think that it should be the international community which should see to it (the financing)," he told a joint news conference with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy.
A year ago Senegal agreed to an African Union (AU) call to put Habre, who is exiled in Dakar since 1991, to trial.
A date has not been set yet but Senegal is under mounting pressure from regime survivors to speedily put him in the dock.
Wade said Africans had the primary responsibility, followed by other countries that insisted that Senegal take charge of the case, and the United Nations.
He added there were also legal problems with the trial, but that former colonial ruler France had agreed to help.
"We have already, in principle, France's financial participation. We will (also) certainly need France's legal aid," said Wade after talks with Sarkozy.
Victims of Habre's eight-year autocratic rule this week asked Sarkozy to press on Wade to speed up the trial.
An official truth commission report in 1992 accused Habre's regime of committing about 40 000 political murders. Only 4 000 have been officially identified.
- AFP