Former president’s lawyers claim trial last year contained irregularities and question credibility of some witnesses

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Lawyers for the former Chad president Hissène Habré have launched an appeal against his conviction last year for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Habré created a police state that terrorised civilians in the 1980s. A special court set up by the African Union and Senegal to try him convicted him last May of summary execution, torture and rape.

He did not make an appearance at the start of his appeal on Monday, but his lawyers said there had been irregularities in his trial and questioned the credibility of some witnesses.

The conviction was the culmination of a three-decade battle for justice led by Habré’s victims, including Souleymane Guengueng, who almost died several times in one of the president’s notorious jails and vowed that when he got out he would right the wrongs he and his fellow inmates had suffered.

Guengueng spent years collecting victims’ testimonies, which proved invaluable during the trial.

One of the witnesses whose credibility was brought into dispute was Khadidja Zidane, who testified that Habré had raped her four times and who later told the Guardian she still feared for her safety 25 years after the former president had left the country, because his supporters regularly insulted and attacked her.

She did not, however, regret testifying. “The whole thing is because I went and told the truth,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I tell the truth? I have every right.

“An injustice has been done to me. I was not alone. Hissène Habré destroyed all of us. I don’t have anything to lose. I have to speak. I don’t care.”

Habré’s lawyers argued that his trial had been politically motivated and unfair, but focused more on his life sentence than on the conviction.

Reed Brody, a campaigner and lawyer known as the dictator hunter, who has fought alongside the victims since 1999 and who discovered a tranche of documents key to Habré’s conviction, said the latest developments were not surprising.

“This is not a retrial, and the conviction was based on very solid evidence – on documents from the secret police, documents he wrote with his own hand, the testimony of a woman he personally raped and people he personally threw in prison,” he said.

Brody was more concerned with how Habré’s victims would be compensated for their suffering. Habré was ordered to pay millions of dollars in reparations to Zidane and many other victims, but none has yet received a penny.

Habré emptied the national treasury before fleeing Chad in 1990, but when he was arrested the Senegalese government seized only two small bank accounts and a house, together worth less than $1m.

Brody’s other concern was that the Senegalese government might issue Habré a pardon, something the country’s justice minister mentioned was a possibility immediately after his conviction.