Dictator’s trial raises hope for African justice amid spat

With many Africans denouncing the International Criminal Court as ‘white man’s justice’, the trial of Chad’s former dictator in Senegal on charges of crimes against humanity offers the continent a chance to show it can hold its leaders to account.

The start of the trial of Hissene Habre today concludes a 15-year battle by victims and rights campaigners to bring the former strongman to justice in Senegal, where he fled after being toppled in a 1990 coup.

Habre, backed by Washington as a bulwark against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in the 1980s, is blamed by rights groups for widespread torture and the killing of up to 40,000 people during the eight years he ruled his impoverished African nation.