Senegalese MPs have passed a law that will allow a special African Union tribunal to be created to try Chad’s former leader Hissene Habre.
The 70-year-old has been under house arrest since 2005 in Senegal, where he fled after being deposed in 1990.
He denies killing and torturing tens of thousands of his opponents.
The decision is seen as a major breakthrough for human rights groups, which have been pushing Senegal to try Mr Habre for decades.
There have been years of wrangling in Senegal over what to do about Mr Habre, with the government of former President Abdoulaye Wade changing its position on whether to try him several times.
”In eight months, [President] Macky Sall’s government has accomplished more to reward the perseverance and tenacity of Habre’s victims than Senegal had over the course of two decades,” Reed Brody from the US-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
The charges date from 1982, when Mr Habre came to power in a coup, until 1990, the year he was ousted.
The National Assembly passed the law following a deal in August between the AU and Senegal setting out international funding for the tribunal.
An aide at the justice ministry told the BBC the AU would now begin appointing judges put forward by the justice minister.
The tribunal’s president would be from elsewhere in Africa and investigations into the case would last 15 months, after which a decision would be made about whether to charge Mr Habre, he said.
BBC
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