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[外媒编译] 【外交政策】那些年,我们的非洲弟兄们

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发表于 2014-2-21 22:29 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
本帖最后由 满仓 于 2014-2-21 22:38 编辑

【中文标题】那些年,我们的非洲弟兄们
【原文标题】Our Man in Africa
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】Michael Bronner
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/23/our_man_in_africa_hissene_habre_chad_reagan


美国扶持一个暴君进行反恐怖战争。现在,他将面临正义的审判。

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主要人物(按出场顺序)
侯赛因•哈布雷 - 乍得总统,1982年-1990年
伊德里斯•代比 - 乍得总统,1990年-现在
大卫•G•福尔德斯上校 - 美国陆军驻乍得武官
理查德•博高 - 美国驻乍得大使,1990年-1992年
穆阿迈尔•卡扎菲 - 利比亚领导人,1969年-2011年
苏莱曼•干瓜因 - 前乍得政治犯
瑞德•布罗迪 - 人权守望组织律师
彼得•罗森布鲁姆 - 前哈佛大学法学院人权项目的副主任
德尔菲娜•德基拉比 - 乍得人权律师
尼古拉斯•素丁 - 哈佛大学法学院人权项目前研究员
基诺维瓦•埃尔南德斯•乌里兹 -哈佛大学法学院人权项目前研究员
古库尼•奥伊戴 - 乍得总统,1979年-1982年
查尔斯•迪费尔 - 美国国务院政治军事局前公务员
切斯特•克罗克 - 前非洲事务助理国务卿
詹姆斯•毕晓普 - 美国国务院切斯特•克罗克的副手
皮特•莫法特 - 美国驻乍得大使,1983年-1985年
约翰•普罗普斯特•布莱恩 - 美国驻乍得大使,1985年-1988年
杰奎琳•穆迪纳 - 乍得人权律师
阿卜杜拉耶•瓦德 - 塞内加尔总统,2000年到2012年
邦基姆•邦顿 - 前乍得文献安全指挥部官员
杜边•埃辛格 - 乍得人权活动者
麦基•萨勒 - 塞内加尔总统,2012年-现在


1990年11月的最后一个晚上,乍得首都恩贾梅纳一片混乱。8年前依靠一场政变上台的总统侯赛因•哈布雷依然在执政,但危机已经不远了。

叛军乘坐丰田皮卡向城市集结,车上装满机枪和戴着防尘面罩、武装到牙齿的士兵,他们尖叫着在沙漠中狂奔。在利比亚的支持和资助下,叛军从东部700英里外苏丹边境的军营出发进入乍得,领导这些人的是哈布雷的前首席军事顾问伊德里斯•代比。

这似乎不是一个举办外交宴会的好时间。

这场宴会是应哈布雷内阁一名重要部长的个人紧急要求,由人脉广泛、出手阔绰的黎巴嫩领事临时召集的。出席的人员包括十几位乍得名流、法国商人、著名的海外侨民,但他们都是为真正重要客人出席所打的幌子,那就是美国陆军武官大卫•G•福尔德斯上校。

部长把福尔德斯拉到一个安静的角落,福尔德斯回忆道:“他不停地抽烟,非常紧张,浑身在颤抖。”哈布雷的军队曾经击败过代比的叛军,人们普遍认为——被哈布雷军事力量马首是瞻的华盛顿也这样认为——他们的胜算很大。但是美国人的心中不像哈布雷那么乐观,部长深谙此道。他说,叛军今天就会抵达首都,比预想的要快很多。

福尔德斯找借口走开,之后赶忙通知美国大使、当地CIA负责人理查德•博高。他们立即致电华盛顿请求指示,并且在可能的情况下给予协助。博高说:“因为哈布雷值得我们挽救,他曾经给予我们的帮助不是所有人都愿意付出的。”

纵观整个80年代,这个被CIA称为“完美沙漠武士”的人,是里根政府暗中削弱利比亚强人穆阿迈尔•卡扎菲的核心手段,得到了国际恐怖主义支持的卡扎菲逐渐成为美国的威胁和尴尬所在。尽管有持续不断的报道声称哈布雷政府有法外施刑、秘密逮捕、狱中私刑的行为,但CIA和国务院非洲局依然在暗中用武器装备哈布雷的军队,并训练他的部队,目的是确保这个独裁者进攻利比亚并占领乍得北部。如果哈布雷政府被推翻,近十年的努力就要付诸东流。

大批的间谍从利比亚涌入恩贾梅纳,给这个国家造成了巨大的威胁。尽管遭到一些美国官员的激烈反对,CIA依然给予哈布雷十几枚针刺导弹,这种肩扛式防空武器是叛军和恐怖分子长期以来寻找的东西。卡扎菲已经宣称会击落民用航空器,针刺导弹绝不能落入他的手中。

还有另外一个问题,CIA在首都郊外几英里有一个秘密军营,训练反卡扎菲的尖头部队。至少有200人配备了CIA的武器和苏制坦克,他们不会轻易放弃。这场即将发生在首都的、代比率领的由卡扎菲支持的士兵与CIA支持的反卡扎菲武装力量之间的战斗,必将是血腥的。

晚宴后几个小时,首都恩贾梅纳街道上出现了暴乱,因为有谣言说哈布雷的国防军已经溃败。部落冲突(这是乍得在后殖民地时代最不稳定的政治因素,南部的基督教徒和北部的穆斯林种族混居在一起)已经演化成疯狂的大洗劫。哈布雷的同族戈兰人在他的统治下兴旺发达,但现在满载劫掠品,成群结队地涌向城外。跟随他们的是札加瓦族士兵,他们在哈布雷的暴政下也决定投降叛军。

在美国使馆,福尔德斯穿上防弹衣,给每一个人都配发了散弹枪。由于担心使馆会被占领,他和行动负责人开始销毁保密文件、破坏重要的通讯设备。这时,第一批叛军已经进入了城市。CIA负责人在另一层楼也在做同样的事情。

与此同时,博高接到了华盛顿的紧急电话:两架C-141军用运输机满载武器、弹药和其它物资,已经准备好从美国起飞,支援哈布雷的国防军。博高说:“它们已经在跑道上准备起飞,我们在电话里说:‘别费劲了,已经来不及了。’”

从来不害怕战争的哈布雷看到了无可挽回的局势,这位“完美沙漠武士”在当晚驾驶他的梅赛德斯汽车直接进入美国给他的一架洛克希德L-100大力士运输机,装上他最亲信的副手,离开乍得。在喀麦隆短暂停留之后,到达塞内加尔首都达喀尔,这是法国情报部门为他安排的逃亡计划。乍得是非洲最贫穷的国家之一,但据说前领导人利用私吞国库的资金在达喀尔营造了一个奢侈的安全网络。他贿赂当地政客、宗教领袖、记者和警察,还购买了两座公馆,他可以安全地在那里居住多年。

但他不能永远躲藏下去。当代比的大部队在第二天早晨控制了恩贾梅纳之后,哈布雷的秘密监狱中的几十名罪犯走出了牢房,因为监狱已经无人看管。这些政治犯走在街上,它们极度瘦弱、伤痕累累,心中充满了无限的苦楚,遭受了无法言喻的虐待。其中一个在那天早晨彳亍在街头人叫苏莱曼•干瓜因。他曾经是一名会计师,在经历了将近两年半的狱中折磨之后,他的双目几乎失明,奄奄一息。到2013年,他亲手覆灭了哈布雷。



925 - 副本.jpg

侯赛因•哈布雷自1982年掌权以来就一直受到全世界人权组织的关注,他就职总统后不到一年,大赦国际就发表了第一份乍得国内的政治杀戮报告。但几十年来,他的地位基本上没有遭到任何挑战。作为乍得的总统,他得到了世界上大部分强权国家的支持,即使在流亡期间,长久以来的国际传统也让一个国家的前领导人终生免受起诉。免罪的传统与《联合国反酷刑公约》相违背,但一直大行其道,公约规定缔约国有责任起诉实施酷刑的人,或者将其引渡到可以起诉的国家。

但是在1998年10月,国际社会的立场突然发生了变化。82岁的前智利独裁者奥古斯托•皮诺切特在伦敦一所医院中恢复背部手术时,英国的特工手持西班牙政府应受到皮诺切特迫害的西班牙公民的呼吁而签发的逮捕令,将其逮捕,并起诉他94起酷刑罪和1起阴谋酷刑罪。

946.jpg

这些罪行仅仅是皮诺切特滔天罪行的九牛一毛,但它已经给人权组织带来了一些希望,同时撼动了保守的外交保护圈。前英国首相玛格丽特•撒切尔曾经斥责对外交豁免权的攻击,因为她把一位领导人当作朋友:“从此以后,所有的前政府领导人都面临潜在的危险。这是一个已经打开的潘多拉魔盒——除非参议员皮诺切特可以安全地返回智利,我们就没有机会关上盒子。”

这就是瑞德•布罗迪在思考的问题。

作为一个来自布鲁克林的纽约助理检察官,布罗迪是曼哈顿人权守望组织的总辩护官。他喜欢这个职业中对抗的内涵,当他在CNN上看到皮诺切特的新闻,他开始思考,抓住了一些可能性,布罗迪说:“我们几个月前在罗马起草《国际刑事法院规约》(第一个永久性的审判法庭,具备起诉种族屠杀、反人类和战争罪的权力)的条款,现在就出现了一个活生生的案例。”

皮诺切特被捕标志着欧洲法官第一次采用全球司法权的原则,它让法院有权起诉一个犯有国际法中最严重罪行的人,无论被告的国籍和犯罪行为出现在哪里。就皮诺切特的案件来说,上议院(当时英国最高的司法机构)需要决定的最重大的法律问题是,英国是否应当忽略传统的法律豁免权,而是依据《联合国反酷刑公约》来把他引渡到西班牙。

曾经调查过皮诺切特时代中美洲侵犯人权事件的布罗迪飞往伦敦,代表人权守望组织向检方提供咨询服务。1988年11月,在一间拥挤的法庭里宣读的戏剧性的判决中,法官做出了不利于智利强人的判决。一名英国法理学家解释了这个判决中决定性的因素:“酷刑和绑架人质是任何人都无法接受的行为,这对国家首脑甚至更高级别的人的适用性,和对所有普通人的适用性一样。任何有别于此的结论都是对国际法的践踏。”

皮诺切特被捕后,潘多拉的盒子被打开了,一个颇为引人入胜的问题萦绕在人权组织的头上:“谁将是下一个?”

当布罗迪还是哥伦比亚的一名法律系学生时,一名教授对于全国有色人种协会推翻种族隔离制度辩论策略的见解,对他产生了深远的影响。“他们先从一个简单的案件着手,最终赢得了‘布朗诉托皮卡教育局案’(译者注:美国历史上非常重要、具有指标意义的诉讼案。该案于1954年5月17日由美国最高法院做出决定,判决种族隔离本质上就是一种不平等,因此原告与被告双方所争执的‘黑人与白人学童不得进入同一所学校就读’的种族隔离法律必须排除‘隔离但平等’先例的适用,因此种族隔离的法律因为剥夺了黑人学童的入学权利而违反了美国宪法第十四修正案中所保障的同等保护权而违宪,该法律因而不得在个案中适用,学童不得基于种族因素被拒绝入学。因为本判决的缘故,终止了美国社会中存在已久白人和黑人必须分别就读不同公立学校的种族隔离现象。)。”布罗迪对我说这番话时,我们正在帝国大厦人权守望组织办公室旁边的一家韩国餐厅吃饭。在皮诺切特被判决之后,布罗迪搬到纽约居住,他决定采取同样的策略。布罗迪需要一个他必胜无疑的案件。

引起他关注这个案件的是他的朋友和前同事彼得•罗森布鲁姆,当时他是哈佛大学法学院人权项目的副主任。他在恩贾梅纳一家酒店的房间里留下一张纸条:“我找到了你的下一个案子,哈布雷,乍得。”布罗迪立即发现了机会,尽管他对侯赛因•哈布雷和乍得几乎一无所知,但他知道,哈布雷的避难所塞内加尔就是这个独裁者的软肋。

塞内加尔是第一批批准《国际刑事法院罗马规约》的国家之一,而且已经签署了《联合国反酷刑公约》。如果布罗迪可以对哈布雷提起酷刑诉讼,塞内加尔将不得不引渡他。布罗迪说:“这个国家一直认为自己是国际法和人权领域的先驱。我们在想,如果有一个国家志愿拿出一个伸张国际正义的案件,那必将是塞内加尔。”

1999年,罗森布鲁姆把布罗迪介绍给一位在哥伦比亚学习的乍得年轻律师,德尔菲娜•德基拉比是乍得第一位女性律师,她警告布罗迪,尽管哈布雷已经下台9年,但首都依然布满独裁者的心腹,他们在机场、海关、警察局任职。如果布罗迪要继续他的工作——她非常期望看到事情的进展——那么他必须要极为小心。证人恐怕不敢说话,错走一步都会引起乍得情报机构的警觉。毕竟现总统伊德里斯•代比在推翻哈布雷之前,是他的心腹和密友。

作为一个精明的棋手,布罗迪决定先放出暗哨。哈佛大学人权项目的两名研究员是跟随罗森布鲁姆学习的年轻律师,他们同意前往乍得,表面上是研究一个有争议的乍得与喀麦隆石油管线的项目。来自比利时的尼古拉斯•素丁和他的同事,来自西班牙的基诺维瓦•埃尔南德斯•乌里兹在台风季到达恩贾梅纳,他们随身携带哈佛大学的4000美元津贴、德基拉比告诉他们的几个联系人姓名,以及调查案件的秘密任务。

德基拉比给他们安排了不易引人注目的天主教工作,素丁扮成牧师,埃尔南德斯扮成修女。他们没有汽车,不得不徒步穿过首都泥泞的街道,寻找目击者的家。埃尔南德斯告诉我:“我们感觉到被跟踪了。”她和素丁发现人们害怕谈起哈布雷统治时期的事情。

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在哈布雷执政时期饱受折磨的苏莱曼•干瓜因,在把独裁者绳之以法的过程中起到了至关重要的作用。

而苏莱曼•干瓜因不是这样,他开门时的反应不像他们找到的另外一些受害者那样害怕。埃尔南德斯回忆道:“他很激动,说他等待这一刻已经很久了,他说是上帝把我们带到这里来。”于是,两个学生和他在花园里坐下,听他讲埋藏在心中很久的故事。

1988年8月3日,是乍得湖流域委员会漫长的一天,干瓜因在这个跨政府组织中做会计工作。他从办公桌上抬起头来,看到她的妻子露达来找他。她极少来到他的办公室,已经怀有他们第7个孩子的露达非常恐惧,说哈布雷可怕的情报组织“文献安全指挥部”的便衣到家里来找他,请他快点躲起来。

他还没有来得及安慰她,特工就已经找到他的办公室,他们的丰田车上印着文献安全指挥部的字样。他们命令干瓜因推来自己的摩托车,自己骑车跟他们走,一个特工坐在后座上。出发的时候,干瓜因看到他的表弟坐在文献安全指挥部的车里,也被捕了。

干瓜因被带到文献安全指挥部情报部副部长的办公室。他回忆道:“第一个问题是我信封什么宗教,我说我是个基督教徒,他说他也是。他让我说实话,只说实话,否则他有很多方法让我就范。”

文献安全指挥部官员问他知道不知道为什么会到这里来。干瓜因说不知道,他马上挨了一个嘴巴。接下来他被指与表弟合谋为反哈布雷分子提供资金和庇护,因为他曾经在喀麦隆边境居住过。(在乍得国内混乱期间,整个乍得湖流域委员会都被临时安置在那里。)干瓜因经常迎接其它乍得难民来到他在喀麦隆的家,但是对于他是为破坏分子提供庇护的反对派的指控,荒唐得让他笑出声来。

站在身后的卫兵突然用枪托狠狠地砸向他的脑袋。

干瓜因被拖进牢房,消失在恐怖的炼狱中。两年半的时间里,这个温和的记账先生先后被关在3个监狱中——最早是单独监禁,然后是和其它犯人挤在一起,甚至睡觉都不能躺倒,除非有人死掉。实际上,每天晚上都有人死去,活人于是就躺在死人身上睡觉。直到狱卒觉得死人堆得太高(五、六个人),他们才会搬走尸体。最近,曾经和干瓜因被关在一间牢房的朋友克莱门特•阿贝福塔在恩贾梅纳接受了一次长时间、令人动容的采访。他说,在4年多时间里,他每天都被强迫掩埋了数百具被处决和病死的犯人尸体。

干瓜因也几乎变成了死者之一。他对我说:“我曾经有三次放弃了生存下去的希望,我病得很严重。”干瓜因的疾病是政治犯们普遍遭遇的情形:疟疾、登革热和肝炎。他曾经在一天24小时轮流被关闭在完全黑暗和强光刺眼的环境中,而且只能站立,连续几个月。在后来的几个月里,他几乎无法行走。最糟糕的是,当他被抓到带领其它犯人祈祷时,狱卒捆住他的睾丸把他吊起来。

干瓜因说:“我当时在想,‘如果上帝让我熬过这场苦难,我该怎么做?’”那天晚上,他暗暗打定主意,如果他得以幸免,他将用一生的努力向世人揭示侯赛因•哈布雷对乍得犯下的罪行。当干瓜因向布罗迪的特使讲述这些故事的时候,两位年轻的哈佛大学法律学生几乎要落泪。

素丁说:“接下来他说,他愿意出庭作证。”

干瓜因藏在家里的是792项目击者证词,这都是他在哈布雷下台之后多年来用花言巧语从其它幸存者口中得到的信息。其中包含了三次种族镇压行动,由于怀疑这些种族对政府的忠诚,哈布雷曾经下令对整个部落进行残酷的惩罚,作为他长久以来巩固政权的残暴方式。证词揭露了各类酷刑,包括灌水、用汽车排气管使人窒息和臭名昭著的“Arbatachar”——受害者的四肢被绑在身后,逐渐收紧绳子使胸部在最大程度上突出。这造成了肢体变形、瘫痪或者坏死。

独裁者潜逃之后,前哈布雷政权中的要员依然留在恩贾梅纳,很多还身居要职。有人听说干瓜因在做的事情,威胁他的生命安全。于是干瓜因把这些证据藏起来,希望有一天他可以给律师展示。他说,你们的出现让我知道,这一天终于来了。

埃尔南德斯说:“在那一刻,我们知道,我们终于有了一个案子。我们非常兴奋。我们掌握了实际的证据,这一定会启动司法程序。”

她和素丁两个人也很害怕。他们给干瓜因找到纸张,他在办公室偷偷摸摸地复印证据材料。素丁把这些文件藏在修道院的洗衣房中,但他们不知道怎样才能把它们带出乍得。装载行李箱中带出机场是一个选择,但是太危险了。他们在美国使馆找到了一位警官,他同意用外交邮包寄出这些文件,但他们还是觉得这样的安排不保险。

在他们想好完美的解决方案之前,埃尔南德斯不得不提前离开。于是素丁作出了一个大胆的决定:无视危险的存在,采用一位高级牧师的建议。他把文件装在背包里,驱车前往机场。当他走上非洲航空公司的柜台,把原定几天之后的机票改到当晚的航班时,他开始后悔自己的鲁莽行为了。柜台服务员看了看他的机票,似乎有些怀疑,说他的机票是假的。当他与服务员争吵时,素丁看了一眼安检柜台,海关人员在随机选择行李打开仔细检查。

与非洲航空公司服务员的争吵莫名其妙地结束了,就像它为什么会开始一样让人摸不到头脑。素丁拿着行李派对等待安检。官员们依然在选择一些行李打开检查。他随着队伍慢慢地走近……幸运之神降临了。“第二天早晨,我已经来到巴黎,这些文件终于离开了这个国家。”


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巴黎国际都市大学的海外法国领土之家,在60年代和70年代初和后殖民地时代往往被称为“非洲之家”。这里是革命政治的温床,来自各所大学的年轻非洲学生每天在这里聚会,讨论马克思、法农,争论当时席卷非洲大陆的内战。

这里很少有乍得学生,但他们的参与度很高。在60年的殖民历史中,虽然法国很少关注乍得,但它把这个国家分为南北两个部分。种植棉花、基督教盛行的南方被称为“有用的乍得”;相对贫瘠、穆斯林占主导低位的北方被称为“无用的乍得”。法国在1960年离开乍得时,完全不顾这个国家民族和地区团体间历史上深厚的积怨,任其遭受内战的蹂躏。到了1965年,出于对独立后第一任来自南方的总统弗朗索瓦•托姆巴巴耶的愤怒,乍得陷入混乱。北方的穆斯林尤其痛苦,因此一些人在巴黎聚在一起讨论革命的思想。

侯赛因•哈布雷是参与者中最冷静的一个,他很少讲话,但一开口就会激情四射。这位聪明的年轻人出生在北方一个牧羊人的家庭,他被一位法国军官看中,来到巴黎海外高等研究学院学习政治。他一直读到博士学位,但他期望回到乍得。与哈布雷同在巴黎学习的阿瑟基•伊本•奥马尔说:“他很平静,不轻易放弃自己的观点……这个品质让他站到了结束南方霸权运动的前线。”这个人后来回到乍得,凭借自己的力量成为一名游击队领袖和政治家。

1971年,哈布雷回到祖国,短暂担任公职之后移居到广袤、贫瘠的乍得北方,建立了一个民兵组织,为他今后的仕途打下基础。哈布雷与他的士兵驻扎在提贝斯提山脉的火山岩洞中,那里距首都500英里,杳无人烟,他树立了自己强硬的名声。1974年,他把一名蓝眼睛的法国考古学家弗朗索瓦•克劳斯蒂携为人质将近三年,还杀害了一名前来谈判的法国陆军上尉。这让他名扬西方社会。

伊本•奥马尔谈到他与哈布雷在乍得再次见面时,说:“他给我的印象是,他内心燃烧着一股征服和掌握权力的欲望。”在向这个欲望前进的过程中,他几乎将恩贾梅纳烧为白地。

1979年,哈布雷被乍得邻国临时拼凑起来的过渡政府任命为国防部长,这个过渡政府试图把超过11个乍得各自为战的武装力量结合在一起。选举方案已经确定,但哈布雷不想再等了。1980年3月,他冒然采取了夺取总统宝座的第一次武装行动。他用“斯大林管风琴”向首都发射密集的火箭弹,这种武器在快速发射喀秋莎火箭弹时会发出令人毛骨悚然的声音。

哈布雷最终并没有取胜,但是他的部队与过渡政府领导人、总统古库尼•奥伊戴的军队之间的战争持续了9个月,5000多名乍得人死亡,恩贾梅纳陷入血腥的僵局。

之后,局势突然发生了转变。奥伊戴使出最后的手段,他联系了穆阿迈尔•卡扎菲,这个人是臭名昭著的恐怖主义支持者。利比亚独裁者很高兴介入乍得的冲突。卡扎菲丰厚的石油收入——讽刺的是,其中大部分都来自美国公司——让他有能力展示扩张主义野心,而乍得是他“泛非主义”远景理想的第一步,这样他可以消除殖民地时代非洲的国家边境。乍得与利比亚、尼日尔、尼日利亚、喀麦隆、中非和苏丹接壤,后者在当时是继埃及之后非洲接受美国援助最多的国家。(在与以色列签订《戴维营协议》之后,苏丹是唯一一个支持埃及总统安瓦尔•萨达特的阿拉伯国家。)

到了1980年11月,已经有4000名利比亚士兵进入乍得。12月,他们占领了三分之二的国土面积,包括恩贾梅纳。哈布雷和他的军队逃到苏丹和喀麦隆。1981年1月,奥伊戴和卡扎菲宣布利比亚和乍得即将合并,以此来警告西方及其非洲盟友。

在半个地球以外,罗纳德•里根刚刚当选美国总统。伊朗人质危机不但困扰吉米•卡特一直到他任期结束,而且还让美国的声望扫地。里根决定做一些改变,他很快指出,国际恐怖主义是对世界秩序的首要威胁。就任总统职位一个星期之后,他在白宫南草坪上说:“恐怖分子要当心,一旦国际秩序遭到威胁,我们的政策是给予迅速和有效的惩罚。”

里根并没有提到卡扎菲的名字,但他或许直说也无妨。就职典礼之后,里根很快签署了一项秘密总统调查令:卡扎菲不可以控制乍得。于是,世界上最贫穷的一个国家成为了“恐怖战争”的主要战场。

里根政府的中央情报局局长威廉•卡西和国务卿亚历山大•黑格很快综合了各方意见,与哈布雷合作展开秘密军事行动。用黑格的话来说,目的是替美国“让卡扎菲的鼻子流血”,“把更多的松木盒子(译者注:指棺材)送回利比亚”。很快,里根向哈布雷提供了数百万美元的资助——和未来资助的金额相比,这只是很小的一部分。

第一步是把哈布雷扶上总统宝座。

喀土穆的中央情报局负责人先走出了第一步,他与哈布雷和他的助手在苏丹会面。很快,武器和现金流水般进入哈布雷位于乍得和苏丹边境的叛军营。中央情报局通过当地的盟友送入物资,与中央情报局关系密切的苏丹情报机构把物资装上火车,开往前英国人在达尔富尔的殖民总部尼亚拉。哈布雷在这里等待货物,运过边境。

美国人基本没有考虑一个可能性,就是哈布雷会利用这些物资来镇压自己的人民。一位曾经与哈布雷共事的前美国情报机构官员在邮件中说:“当时没有关注人权问题主要有三个原因:1,我们想要赶走利比亚人,哈布雷是唯一一个可以任我们摆布的可靠人选。2,哈布雷履历上的唯一污点是绑架事件(法国人克劳斯蒂),我们认为可以忽略。3,哈布雷是名合格的战士,不需要训练,我们只需要提供物资。”

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1983年8月6日,哈布雷在恩贾梅纳出席新闻发布会。

1982年6月7日,哈布雷率领2000并士兵一路打进恩贾梅纳,宣布成立乍得“第三共和国”。他从一开始就用暴力巩固自己的政权:对方军事力量的战俘被处决、政治反对派被逮捕并枪杀、被怀疑同情反对派的平民在报复行动中遭到迫害。奥伊戴逃往利比亚,卡扎菲将重新训练和武装他的军队。美国很快用C-141军用运输机运来大量的武器武装哈布雷,准备他与利比亚的代理战争。

这次行动的一线联络员是一名年轻的公务员,名叫查尔斯•迪费尔。或许现在他最广为人知的工作是作为伊拉克核查小组成员,调查美国情报机构对萨达姆•侯赛因的大规模杀伤性武器误报的原因。在80年代初,他已经在兰利建立了广泛的人脉关系,他一直期待一份能让他离开办公室的工作——最好远远离开办公室。与哈布雷武装力量的接洽是一个完美的机会。

迪费尔说:“人们管我叫‘查理•乍得’。”1982年,他在国务院政治军事局工作——他说这个部门就是“一个小规模的五角大楼和中央情报局”——与里根政府颇有影响力的国务卿切斯特•克罗克合作。他的主要任务是帮助乍得与中央情报局通力合作,去求、借,甚至去偷物资给到哈布雷。迪费尔说:“我们搞到了不少好东西,有些是美国制造,有些不是。RPG-7就不错:肩扛式、即时发射,很简便。但我们在五角大楼找不到这东西,你必须得想别的办法,运用想象力。”他的中央情报局同事——一位岁数不小的越南老兵——想办法通过埃及和苏丹情报部门,从华沙条约缔约国购买到这些武器。

在克罗克精明的副手、经验丰富的非洲专家詹姆斯•毕晓普帮助下,迪费尔利用《海外援助法案》506条A款“应急物资使用”的内容,几乎把五角大楼的库存洗劫一空。迪费尔说:“五角大楼恨死我了。我们偷出106毫米无后座力步枪和所有我们觉得有用的东西,空运给乍得,然后让五角大楼支付账单。”第一架货机从多佛空军基地起飞,10辆吉普车的底盘上绑着步枪,还有成堆的高爆弹药和箭形弹。毕晓普对应急物资使用政策的灵活运用极为有效地支持了哈布雷,后来他的团队送给他一件礼物——一个C-141模型,机尾上印着“506-A”。

1985年到1988年任美国驻乍得大使的约翰•普罗普斯特•布莱恩说,里根政府运作几年之后,“有那么一段时间,恩贾梅纳机场就像是莱茵美茵,这里起飞的飞机你简直不敢相信。”他指的是冷战时期位于西德的大型空军基地。他在口述美国外交历史时说:“我是说,C-5和C-141运输机排队在跑道等待起飞。”

对哈布雷来说,他就任总统之后第一次真正的军事危机出现在1983年夏天,奥伊戴在利比亚的支持下率兵进犯乍得北部,占领了哈布雷的老家法亚拉若。卡扎菲派出利比亚预备役军队和空军进攻哈布雷的基地。皮特•莫法特在乍得生活了三年半,一开始任领事,后来出任大使。他说:“我只见过哈布雷两次精神崩溃,”这是他唯一一次看到哈布雷面露恐惧。

为了抵挡进攻,迪费尔-毕晓普-克罗克三人组立即发送了一批紧急物资,包括30个便携式地对空红颜导弹,还派遣美国军事训练员与哈布雷军队合作。两架预警监察机、一架F-15鹰式战斗机、一架空中加油机和600名美军士兵被布署在苏丹,协助哈布雷的反击。里根批准了2500万美元的秘密紧急援助,还派遣一名美国外交语到巴黎与当时的法国总统弗朗索瓦•密特朗见面,要求法国支持哈布雷。

与此同时,一名位于尼日利亚的高级CIA探员与当地情报员取得了联系,用现金购买了几十辆丰田海拉克斯皮卡,并暗地里交付给哈布雷。载有12.7毫米重机枪的CIA卡车将在哈布雷与利比亚军队的作战中起决定性的作用。

扎卡里亚——这个人要求只能透露他的名字——当时是一名21岁的新兵,在法亚拉若的奥伊戴军队中作战。他说他永远无法忘记那些丰田皮卡:他们以难以置信的速度从北边冲进来,哈布雷的士兵一阵猛烈开火,叛军一片混乱。突然之间,哈布雷的第二波进攻出现在南面,彻底消灭了援军。在发动进攻之前,美国国防情报局给哈布雷看敌军位置的“素描”(卫星地图)。奥伊戴的军队毫无抵抗之力。

扎卡里亚说,哈布雷军队庆祝胜利的方式是把敌方士兵用绳子捆在丰田车后面,拉着他们驶过沙漠。哈布雷穿着军装走出来,命令来自几个村镇的被俘士兵站出来,这些村镇被认为与反叛军有关。扎卡里亚身负重伤,无法站立,这救了他的命。有150名士兵被装上卡车,拉倒沙漠深处被处决。

哈布雷在法亚拉若取胜一周之后,卡扎菲依然命令他的军队定期发动战争,把当地的紧张局势推向危险的边缘。利比亚飞机轰炸哈布雷军队,奥伊戴军队在利比亚支持下重新占领了法亚拉若,然后有占领了全部乍得北部。巴黎终于采取了行动,3000名法国伞兵在南纬16度划下一条线,位于恩贾梅纳以北200英里。但利比亚还会在这个国家驻兵多年。

对扎卡里亚来说,他未来的四年半将在哈布雷恐怖的监狱中渡过。现年50多岁的他在2012年10月份出现,他戴着白色头巾,穿着沙漠长袍,在乍得律师德尔菲娜•德基拉比建立的位于恩贾梅纳人权组织的庭院里,向我们讲述他的故事。瑞德•布罗迪和共同起诉哈布雷的法国律师奥利维尔•博考特和他交谈了几个小时,他描述了他在法亚拉若的遭遇,包括哈布雷亲自下令处决战俘,以及狱中的恐怖。扎卡里亚在那一天对我说:“我渴望在法庭上做出针对侯赛因•哈布雷的证词,我对你说的每一句话都要对他说。”


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布罗迪在回忆这个长达14年的诉讼时,笑着说:“哈布雷案件在开始的时候进展非常顺利。”仅仅一个多月的时间里——从2000年1月底到2月初——布罗迪和他的同事就已经准备好在塞内加尔提出针对哈布雷的第一个诉讼。作为被告,哈布雷将第一次接受质询,这个案件将会引起全世界媒体的关注。

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2000年1月,瑞德•布罗迪和律师及乍得受害者在达喀尔法庭。

他们在准备案件的过程中,最大的问题是设法不要惊动被告。布罗迪说:“一开始的时候,我们根本不知道谁是谁——谁会给哈布雷透露信息。我们很担心……他逃离塞内加尔。”

布罗迪和他庞大的团队利用电话和电子邮件暗语,在纽约、恩贾梅纳和达喀尔之间精心安排“把希腊的牧师带到罗马参加红衣主教的大赦年聚会”。“希腊”就是乍得;“牧师”是经过挑选的哈布雷政权受害者;“罗马”是达喀尔,“红衣主教”指的是哈布雷本人;“大赦年聚会”就是法律诉讼,受害者将正式控告哈布雷的“酷刑、野蛮行径和反人类罪行”。

来自苏莱曼•干瓜因和尼古拉斯•素丁行李箱中的受害者证词,是案件的核心证据。干瓜因和另外6名幸存者随律师团队前往塞内加尔,以备法官的随时召唤,这些人代表了乍得复杂的穆斯林/基督教、北方/南方组成,以及哈布雷政府专门镇压的种族群体。他们利用虚假的达喀尔研讨会邀请申请旅行文件,这样不需要透露真实目的。

团队在达喀尔一家破旧的宾馆中汇合。干瓜因在开庭前一天晚上敲开布罗迪的房门。布罗迪在一份尚未发表的材料中写道:“他又瘦又高,戴着一副大大的、像瓶子底一样的眼镜。他告诉我一个严肃的决定,我看到,他一生的目标——让侯赛因•哈布雷接受正义的审判——即将启动……他告诉我,他‘决定为此奋斗到底’,并问我是不是也这么想。我告诉他,我很荣幸与他这样的人合作,我会竭尽全力。”

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2000年1月,律师布昆塔•迪亚洛(左)、瑞德•布罗迪(左二)、国际人权联盟秘书长威廉•波登(左三)和律师西迪基•卡巴在达喀尔法院提起针对哈布雷的诉讼。

他们在1月26日提起诉讼,两天后,高级调查法官召唤乍得受害者,在闭门会议中请他们讲述自己的故事。得到布罗迪暗示的媒体在听证会结束后包围了这些证人,这起案件立即登上非洲各大媒体头条。

4天后,法官对哈布雷提起诉讼,将其暂时软禁在家。《纽约时报》一篇社论文章《非洲的皮诺切特》盛赞“国际刑法翻开了伟大的新篇章”。

在团队提起诉讼之后,法国驻塞内加尔大使立即为这些乍得证人提供了临时政治庇护,因为担心他们回国后将面临人身危险。每个人都在询问干瓜因的意见,他在开口之前慎重思考了一下。

他对法国特使说:“在来到达喀尔提起诉讼之前,我已经做好准备死在这里。我明天将回到乍得,如果我在下飞机时被害,我会像英雄一样死去。”

干瓜因回到乍得后并没有遇到危险。人权守望组织授予他一个奖项,折合1万美元的奖金,还把他带到美国参加人权守望组织的筹款活动。这位谦卑的乍得账簿先生在纽约和加利福尼亚州的高级场所受到了塞缪尔•杰克逊、琼•贝兹和南西•佩罗西等人的致敬。干瓜因还在圣约翰大教堂向他的1000名支持者致辞,布罗迪一直陪在他身边。他的故事引起了公众对这起案件广泛的支持。

在旅途中,布罗迪联系了贝尔维尤纽约大学酷刑幸存者项目的负责人,他们安排手术切除了干瓜因双眼的白内障。在美国期间,干瓜因就和布罗迪的家人住在布鲁克林。据布罗迪说,他很快就能在大富翁游戏中打败所有人。他还和布罗迪的儿子扎克去滑雪,那是他第一次见到雪。他回到乍得之后,全身投入到代表着他全部人生目的的案件中。


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1986年4月14日漆黑的夜间,一支由58架美国军事飞机组成的编队从4个英国空军基地起飞,向南飞去。几个小时之后,由轰炸机、电战机和空中加油机组成的编队飞越地中海。在几声无线电点缀的一片寂静中,下方的美国航母开始起飞战斗机。

的黎波里时间凌晨1:50,电战机率先开始实施打击,用干扰器破坏卡扎菲精密的防空网络。接下来,战斗机发射高速反辐射导弹和百舌鸟导弹。在12分钟时间里,美国轰炸机攻击了的黎波里机场、利比亚海军学院和阿齐齐亚街区,卡扎菲和他的妻子孩子住在那里。与此同时,12架战斗机飞越班加西和贝尼亚,摧毁了一座兵营和飞机场。大约37名利比亚人——包括平民——丧生,两名美国空军上尉因F-111战机被击落而丧生。

与这次攻击最接近的一个理由是,一个星期前西柏林一家迪斯科发生的恐怖炸弹袭击,两名美国服务生丧生。情报人员截获的电报信息显示的黎波里祝贺东德的利比亚探员任务圆满完成,据此认为恐怖袭击的策划者是卡扎菲。从更广泛的意义上讲,这次攻击表达了里根政府一种发泄的情绪,80年代初的大量恐怖袭击让里根看起来就和他试图改变的卡特政府一样无助。

这次攻击名为“黄金峡谷行动”,效果不同凡响。但是里根通过哈布雷发动的代理战争所造成的死亡人数是这次行动的200倍,利比亚损失的15亿美元军备也仅仅是很小的一部分。这样巨额的花费让乍得与利比亚冲突的最后阶段被称为“丰田战争。”(译者注:指丰田皮卡车在乍得军队的作战中发挥了关键性的作用。)

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一辆丰田陆地巡洋舰皮卡满载乍得士兵。

利比亚长期占据乍得北方,这给哈布雷带来的羞辱不啻于卡扎菲给里根政府带来的羞辱。1万名利比亚士兵到1986年控制了一片巨大的狭长地带,得到利比亚支持的叛军还经常跨越南纬16度线,挑衅性地进攻首都。利比亚空军的飞机从名为“奥祖地带”的乍得北部起飞,甚至还在旺地多姆修建了一个巨大、虎视眈眈的空军基地。

作为回应,在1984年底与卡扎菲签订协议之后退兵的法国,重新派出一架防御性的战斗机、一支特种部队和1000人的军队(这批军队在今天依然是法国在马里行动的中坚力量)。他们在旺地多姆草草扔下几颗炸弹之后就返回国内,然后建议哈布雷也这么做,因为担心他惹恼卡扎菲大举进攻恩贾梅纳。

哈布雷的美国朋友给出了不同的建议。

大使布莱恩说:“我几乎每天都和总统见面,一星期至少有三、四次……我们一起合作,我认为,还是相当成功的。他的目标,在我任期里他唯一的目标,就是赶走比利亚人。这是他所思考问题的全部。”美国增加了对哈布雷的武器供给,为了抵挡利比亚飞机飞越恩贾梅纳上空,CIA请求当时还是好朋友的萨达姆•侯赛因帮忙,提供苏制高空SA-2地对空导弹。一位参与这次交易的美国高层官员说:“这足够保护一座机场。”

与此同时,哈布雷还盯上了美国军火库中最热门、最紧缺的武器:便携式FIM-92针刺地对空导弹和BGM-71拖式有线制导反坦克导弹。这位高层官员说:“他不停地说,需要针刺,需要拖式,需要针刺,需要拖式。或许我们不该这么做,但我们还是做了,给了他针刺和拖式。”

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1987年4月5日卡莱特,一名乍得士兵站在架有机关枪的军用路虎汽车旁边。哈布雷的军队在一个月之前,用汽车配合便携式武器击退了配备现代化坦克的利比亚军队。

哈布雷在1987年1月2日开始反击。他的士兵冲向北方,摧毁了法达一个守备森严的利比亚通讯基地,他们从以闪电般的速度从四面八方进攻这支1000人的守备部队。持有苏制T-55坦克和重炮的利比亚守军束手待毙,他们的武器在非传统的战争方式中毫无用武之地。乍得人在皮卡车上近距离发射米兰反坦克导弹,被炸毁的装甲车在沙地中动弹不得。坦克的引擎还在运转时,利比亚人就已经弃车而逃。

与此同时,华盛顿的国防情报工作人员把最新的卫星地图——包括卡扎菲的军队布署、动态、雷区——通过代表当时最高技术水平的“华盛顿安全高速传真系统”设备,与哈布雷直接分享。

一名法国陆军中文在《海军陆战队公报》上发文称,700名“惊恐万状”的利比亚士兵丧生,80人被俘,100辆利比亚装甲车被摧毁。只有20名利比亚士兵死亡。

卡扎菲随后在旺地多姆的空军基地布署了三个营的兵力,加上大量武器。当利比亚军队从旺地多姆出发试图占领法达的失地时,遭到了伏击,800人——整整两个武装营——死亡。乍得人跟着落荒而逃的士兵追到旺地多姆,车上架着开火的机枪直接冲入基地。

接下来在旺地多姆里发生的战争算是热兵器的肉搏。据法国上尉描述,乍得士兵在20米开外发射RPG-7火箭炮,摧毁了坦克,也炸死了自己,连同身边的战友、机枪和反坦克导弹。战斗持续了两个小时,1300名利比亚人和200名乍得人死亡。

9月,哈布雷军队进入利比亚境内,利比亚的空军力量完全被摧毁。布莱恩说:“他们完全破坏了空军基地,一切都废掉了,所有的飞机都被摧毁。他们带了很多人来,因为他们缴获了600辆卡车。”

他们还带回大量缴获的苏联武器,这可是美国情报机构的意外之喜。迪费尔说:“那时候能接触到苏联武器可是不得了的事情,因为我们有机会研究它们的运作原理、优良的性能、所使用的无线电频率。”这其中有完好的Mi-25武装直升机、SA-6移动式地对空导弹系统、“勺架式”雷达列阵。迪费尔帮助把这些设备登记,最有价值的东西装上C-5运输机送给美国和法国情报机构研究。

乍得人在旺地多姆击败卡扎菲之后,布莱恩收到了一封来自华盛顿的电报:里根总统想要在白宫和哈布雷握握手。1987年6月19日,他们见面了。

布莱恩在口述历史中回忆道(他在2012年去世):“这是一次美好的会面。我的妻子和我在一起,我们一直陪在哈布雷身旁。噢,简直太美妙了。哈布雷先生和里根先生相处得非常好。”

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1987年6月,侯赛因•哈布雷与罗纳德•里根在白宫会面。前美国驻乍得大使约翰•普罗普斯特•布莱恩说,两人相处得“非常好”。

见面之后,里根毫不掩饰地给予溢美之词。他说:“我们相信,乍得沙漠中的胜利预示着非洲的和平和稳定。今天,哈布雷总统强调,他的政府承诺要为乍得人民创造更好的生活。”

哈布雷回到乍得之后,完成了他执政期间两次最残忍的镇压行动。1987年,来自哈吉瑞部落的一名军官召集了一个反抗组织,政府军进行残暴的种族报复行动。报复的对象从哈吉瑞部落的贵族和他们的家人扩展到整个部落的平民。两年后,这位独裁者在针对扎格瓦部落的暴力行动中残暴依旧,原因是部落成员、哈布雷的亲密顾问伊德里斯•代比与他决裂。他再一次把平民作为大规模报复的对象。

在哈布雷的整个执政期间,他无时无刻不在享受着美国政府的支持,尤其是中央情报局的支持——即使华盛顿已经转移了对利比亚的关注,即使类似大赦国际这样的组织不断谴责乍得监狱中恐怖的酷刑。哈布雷逃往期间的美国大使博高说:“有消息称数千人被关押在条件苦不堪言的监狱中,而监狱实际上就在美国国际开发署办公室的对面。这个消息后来得到了证实。” 他承认,尽管如此,侯赛因•哈布雷依然是华盛顿在恩贾梅纳的首席代言人。“你可以说,我们之间的关系由一种内在的动力维系着。”


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瑞德•布罗迪追捕侯赛因•哈布雷所迈出的第一步带来的喜悦并未持续很久。律师们很快意识到,把独裁者绳之以法不仅仅是法律层面的问题,也是政治层面的问题。

2000年7月4日,哈布雷在达喀尔被起诉短短几个月之后,布罗迪正在纽约州北部的独立日聚会中打垒球。这时他接到了一个紧急的电话:起诉哈布雷的塞内加尔法官被调离这个案件。这起案件因此被取消,塞内加尔上诉法院和最高法院先后做出这样的决定,原因是对于哈布雷在乍得犯下的罪行没有司法权。这样的判决公然违反了塞内加尔签署的《联合国反酷刑公约》。

这只能算是让哈布雷伏法的漫长旅程中无数障碍的第一个。律师团队中的乍得首席律师杰奎琳•穆迪纳——这个国家最著名的律师之一——代表17名酷刑受害者在恩贾梅纳同时起诉哈布雷政权下文献安全指挥部的所有探员,之后她遭到袭击,受伤严重。一些目前仍然身居高位的前文献安全指挥部官员被召唤质询,这在乍得以前从未发生过。其中一名被告现在是代比手下国家警备部的警察,2001年6月,警方袭击了穆迪纳,丢出的一颗手榴弹在她两腿之间爆炸。当时身在美国的布罗迪赶紧抽调紧急资金,把她送到巴黎接受手术治疗。

酷刑的图片

乍得调查委员会报告中的素描图。


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布罗迪用多种方式展开反击,他发动所有能联系到的记者,给时任塞内加尔总统的阿卜杜拉耶•瓦德施加压力,强迫他遵守《联合国反酷刑条约》的承诺。布罗迪说:“我下定决心……要把瓦德逼疯。他走到哪里,都要听到这起案件。”

更重要的是,他开始寻找能让哈布雷伏法的其它审判地。2000年11月30日,移居到比利时的乍得受害者基于这个国家1993年的全球司法权法律,向布鲁塞尔法庭提起刑事诉讼,皮诺切特在英国被捕也是基于同样的法律条例。2002年初,一名来自布鲁塞尔、留着马尾辫的法官在乍得引起了轰动,她带领四个身强力壮的比利时警察和和一位公诉人来到恩贾梅纳调查案件,他们坚持要实地参观前政治犯的监狱。当时播下的种子在12年之后才开花结果,但比利时的干预是至关重要的。

过程如此漫长的原因相当复杂,即使当布罗迪发现了致命的新证据之后也未能加快进度。

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“碧池”的内部景象,这时由殖民地时代的游泳池改造的地下监狱。

2001年5月闷热的一天,布罗迪出现在臭名昭著的碧池外,这个殖民地时代的游泳池被哈布雷的文献安全指挥部改造成恩贾梅纳市中心闷热的地下监狱,它或许是哈布雷灿若繁星的秘密监狱中最残忍的一个。跟随布罗迪来到乍得的是一个纪录片摄制组,他们给政府施压,允许他们进入被废弃的牢房。碧池的墙壁仿佛依然回响着受害者灵魂乞求怜悯的尖叫声。参观完这里之后,摄影机依然在继续拍摄,他们要求看一看隔壁废弃的文献安全指挥部总部。

布罗迪本来期望这趟旅程仅可以给媒体一些爆料的机会。但是在文献安全指挥部旧址,他意外发现了一座金山——深及膝盖的废弃文件,其中详细记录了哈布雷政权非人性的机制。堆在地板上的是数千张情报机构的文件,有犯人名单、逮捕和审讯记录、死亡证明、监控报告——布罗迪说这是“被遗忘的乍得最黑暗时代的记录”。布罗迪利用代比政府试图让自己与哈布雷政权划清界限的弱点,得到复印这些文件的批准。(这部由瑞士记者皮埃尔•哈山拍摄的纪录片名叫《独裁者猎手》。)

回到纽约之后,人权守望组织把文献安全指挥部的文件交给一位外部的统计学家。他最终确定文件中共有1208名犯人在狱中被处决或死亡,以及12321名受害者的人权被侵害。统计学家还发现,文献安全指挥部曾直接向哈布雷提交了1265份文件,其中涉及898名犯人。

这其中还有一份极为特殊的文件。来自文献安全指挥部和哈布雷私人保镖中的12个人,在1985年被送往美国接受“特殊训练”,地点是距华盛顿特区几百英里的一个秘密基地。

邦基姆•邦顿——一名粗壮、圆脸的前文献安全指挥部探员——在赴美训练人员名单当中,同时他的名字也出现在布罗迪找到的另一份文件中。1992年,乍得调查委员会出于一种本能的想法,试图列举哈布雷政权的罪行。他们找出14名文献安全指挥部探员,这是哈布雷手下最“狠毒”的酷刑人,被政治犯人认为是最“残忍、施虐狂和没有人性”的人。邦顿就是其中之一。前政治犯吉那提•恩加巴耶对我说:“他经常来到我的牢房和女人鬼混,他在晚上把人带走,并杀死他们。”

2012年,我在巴黎北站对面的咖啡厅与邦顿做过两次长谈,他非常小心地回避直接回应这些指控。但他看起来下定决心与全世界分享他了解的第一手资料,他说:“大约有4万到4.5万人被杀害,这些人都不是小人物。我想要让哈布雷得到正义的审判,我可以指证一些人并澄清一些问题。我也准备好为我自己的所作所为面对法律的公断。”

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邦基姆•邦顿。

为了防止隔壁座位的人偷听,邦顿列出了文件安全指挥部的结构和大规模残忍的暴行,包括令人惊掉下巴的“犯人在晚上被秘密处决”和“我知道被逮捕的每个人都要遭受酷刑”。他还说,如果一个犯人经受住了前期的酷刑,他会出现在10到12人的文献安全指挥部探员小组面前,这些人将决定他的命运。

邦顿最初的堕落是在乍得南部,哈布雷自从1982年掌权之后,一直面临反叛军队的骚扰。布署在那里的军队听从伊德里斯•代比的指挥,他当时还是哈布雷的首席幕僚,他们草率地屠杀了数千名反叛军和平民。邦顿是南方人,他有一个表兄参加了反叛军,因此他被派出利用家族关系收集情报,试图与反叛军指挥官达成协议。

1984年9月,双方终于达成了一致意见。邦顿说,被他说服放下武器的反叛军从藏身处走出来准备签署协议时,哈布雷的军队开枪了。这场屠杀标志着乍得最黑暗的屠戮时代的开始,被称为“黑色九月”。政府军屠杀被认为同情反叛分子的整个村庄。就是在这些暴行之后,邦顿被选中送往美国,他说代比亲自在哈布雷面前表扬过他。

“特殊训练”开始于1985年。学员先飞到巴黎,美国官员在那里接上他们,一起继续第二段旅程,到达华盛顿郊外的杜勒斯国际机场。然后他们再乘坐私人飞机和汽车,车窗被涂成黑色,最终到达训练基地。在十个星期里,说法语的美国人教给邦顿和他的战友学习“反恐”——识别并操作炸药、熟悉制作炸药的化学品的味道、扫描并拆除炸弹、排雷、近距离保护。他说:“他们教会我们用恐怖分子的思维思考。”

至于邦顿和他的战友会对自己的同胞实施恐怖行为,以及这是否还有必要得到美国的训练和支持的想法,从未引起过重视。

迪费尔回忆道:“接下来发生了一些事情。”1983年,贝鲁特美国海军兵营遭到轰炸,美国驻科威特大使馆部分被汽车炸弹炸毁。1984年3月,贝鲁特当地CIA主管威廉•巴克利被绑架。下个月,利比亚特工从驻英国领事馆开枪射击伦敦街道,一名英国警察死亡,10名平民受伤。1984年9月,卡扎菲被怀疑与苏伊士运河埋放的水雷和试图谋杀哈布雷的手提箱炸弹有关。第二年,恐怖分子劫持环球航空公司、埃及航空公司和科威特航空公司的飞机;袭击罗马国际机场;强征阿奇劳罗号巡洋舰,事件中有美国人被害。

里根总统被一波又一波的恐怖活动激怒了,但颇为无助,他在1985年7月全国律师协会上的讲话终于爆发,确立了反恐政策的重要地位:“美国人民绝对不会——我再说一遍——绝对不会容忍针对这个国家和人民的威胁、恐怖和赤裸裸的战争。我们更加不会容忍来自那些自德意志第三帝国之后出现的,由神经病、疯子和罪犯统治的亡命国度的攻击。”

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邦顿在美国接受的训练明显让他(和美国)受益。他告诉我,他被提升为文献安全指挥部反恐局负责人,他还亲自截获了一枚手提箱炸弹。一位名叫约翰的中央情报局官员找到他,表示感谢之后取走了箱子。(1984年3月,一架法国客机在从恩贾梅纳起飞前被炸毁。1989年9月,另一枚炸弹在一架法国喷气机从乍得起飞后一小时爆炸,171人遇难,其中包括时任美国驻乍得大使罗伯特•普格的妻子邦妮•普格。利比亚特工被怀疑与这次恐怖活动有关。)

但是,日渐积累的恶行负罪感让他无法自拔。被逮捕和审讯耗尽精力的邦顿在1987年遭受了身体和精神的崩溃,不得不住院治疗。赋闲一年之后,邦顿申请了一个护照。这引起了文献安全指挥部的警觉,他被押送到首都,面对15名同事遭到“非常非常严厉”的审讯,罪名是密谋反对哈布雷。后来,他被送入离文献安全指挥部不远处的的一座监狱。

他说,牢房里的人通常在晚上11点到12点被带走处决。有一天进来了三个人。邦顿曾经在头脑里无数次演习怎样抢到武器,至少杀死一个人。但是当几个人真正走过来,他发现自己无力抵抗,任由自己走向处决现场。然后,事情出现了怪异的转折:监狱负责人走出来,拥抱邦顿,说他可以走了。

被释放三天之后,邦顿被安排与文献安全指挥部新负责人见面,他得到了一份工作。他们威胁邦顿说如果不接受,还会被丢入监狱,他只好返回工作岗位,但他开始给法国军方的联系人传达一些信息。由于厌倦了独裁者的暴行,从前支持哈布雷的巴黎希望详细了解大规模屠杀、法外行刑和战俘集中营的情况。1990年他们秘密把邦顿带出国。

但是邦顿无法摆脱自己的过去。在巴黎,他作为一个臭名昭著的刽子手而遭到乍得移民社团的唾弃,他持续不停地接到控诉和威胁。

最后,在2001年底和2002年初,邦顿遇到了乍得著名人权活动人士杜边•埃辛格。他是瑞德•布罗迪的合作伙伴,也参与了哈布雷的案件,他定期路过巴黎。邦顿对他说:“我一直在等你,我跟了你很久,我知道你在处理的案子。我参与过你现在调查的罪行。”

邦顿邀请埃辛格到他家详谈。埃辛格有点害怕,同事劝他不要去,但他最终无法拒绝。他对我说:“这是我们的一个机会。”到家之后,邦顿给他做饭,在相处了几个小时、喝了无数杯酒之后,邦顿表示愿意为这个案件作证。在巴黎见面时,他告诉我,他愿意提供自己参与哈布雷犯罪活动的详细、完整的证词,只要布罗迪可以提起诉讼。

2008年6月,邦顿与布罗迪和律师团队的其他成员在人权守望组织的巴黎办公室会面。他们的谈话持续了整整15个小时,邦顿详细介绍了布罗迪在文献安全指挥部总部找到的数千份文件的背景。他交待得非常彻底,详细描述了独裁者与文献安全指挥部的直接联系。布罗迪说:“这起案件并没有‘冒烟的枪管’这样的证据,比如哈布雷说‘给我杀掉这些人’等等。是邦顿帮助我们解释文献安全指挥部是如何亲手把文件教给哈布雷;哈布雷如何仔细阅读……有数百份文件上写着‘呈哈布雷总统’,邦基姆•邦顿可以说:‘这份文件是文献安全指挥部的头头交给哈布雷的,我知道他读过。”


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2013年早晨,塞尔加尔警方在达喀尔的家中逮捕了侯赛因•哈布雷,他在那里已经度过了22年奢侈的流亡生活。他被起诉的罪名包括反人类罪、酷刑和战争罪。他被监禁在一间经过改造的达喀尔牢房中,等待“非洲特别法庭”的审判——这是塞内加尔法院专门为侯赛因•哈布雷案件成立的审判机构,审判计划在2015年1月开始。布罗迪在逮捕那一天说:“正义的车轮已经转动。22年之后,哈布雷的受害者们终于可以看到黑暗尽头的光亮。”

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2013年7月2日,达喀尔,哈布雷由军警押送前往法庭听证。

哈布雷通过他的律师多次拒绝采访的要求,但他在巴黎的一位律师法朗索瓦•塞和告诉我他的客户拒绝所有指控。奥巴马政府公开表示支持审判,塞和认为这是彻头彻尾的虚伪。2012年7月4日,他在给时任国务卿的希拉里•克林顿的一封信中,谴责美国国务院在上个月呈交给国会的一份报告中所表述的立场。塞和写道:“(这份文件)没有基于一个公平、公正的立场,其原因或许在于一大批国际组织所传达出的错误信息。尤其是人权守望组织,其发言人在过去十年里不顾法院判决,领导了一场针对侯赛因•哈布雷的道德败坏的运动。他们与乍得政府合谋违背了人权的基本原则。”

是比利时人最终帮助布罗迪推动了国际司法的进程,尽管起诉的罪名多达2000项,但其国内的诉讼进程却时快时慢。2003年,比利时的全球司法制度遭到了猛烈的攻击,主要来自美国,因为前总统乔治•H•W•布什、前联席会议参谋长柯林•鲍威尔和前国防部长迪克•切尼被起诉,他们在1991年海湾战争中与炸毁巴格达一处居民房的事件有关。在美国的威胁下,比利时在2003年8月撤销了指控,但是哈布雷的案件反而因此晋级,被安排了更高的优先序。

2009年,在塞内加尔多次对引渡哈布雷的要求置之不理之后,比利时走上了国际法庭——联合国的核心司法机构,也被称为“国际法院”——强迫达喀尔就范。布罗迪说:走上国际法庭就相当于在司法界宣战。“最终,法庭在2012年3月举行了听证会之后,决定塞内加尔必须引渡哈布雷。

人权守望组织把苏莱曼•干瓜因从纽约带来。布罗迪和他的团队给比利时律师提供法律文件包括干瓜因手中的原始受害者资料、文献安全指挥部的文件,以及自从他们在达喀尔对哈布雷提起诉讼之后所积累的法律见解。布罗迪与他的实习生团队夜以继日地忙于准备听证会、帮助比利时律师驳斥塞内加尔的托词。

听证会举行几天之后,事情发生了重大的转折。塞内加尔选出了一个新总统——麦基•萨勒,一位年轻、充满活力的政客。就职不久,萨勒宣布他决心实施法制,哈布雷必须在塞内加尔受审。时任塞内加尔司法部长的阿米塔那•图雷对我说:“我们不想跟上一届政府一样,花许多年来回来去做没意义的事情,我们必须脚踏实地。”

2012年7月20日,国际法庭宣布了一项全体通过的决定,命令塞内加尔“不得继续拖延,把侯赛因•哈布雷先生的案件立即交给恰当的司法机构进行起诉,或者将其引渡。”干瓜因感到大仇即将得报:“今天,我的那些遭到酷刑折磨的朋友、我在监狱中眼睁睁看着死去的人们、所有不曾放弃希望的人,就要看到正义的制裁了。”

4名塞内加尔调查法官在12月来到恩贾梅纳收集证据,布罗迪也来到乍得以备随时提供帮助,这是诉讼早期关键的一步。乍得受害者开始相信哈布雷真的要受审了,他们纷纷从藏身之处现身。法官至少与1000人面谈过,参观了受害者坟墓,查看了一个哈布雷军队屠杀数百名投降士兵的农场。

布罗迪对我说:“这是非洲司法进程的一个重大转折点。非洲受害者把一个独裁者送上法庭,而且通过电视转播,引起了人们无限的遐想……法律逮捕皮诺切特给人增添了勇气,当人们看到苏莱曼•干瓜因自法庭上作证,看到腿上依然嵌有弹片杰奎琳•穆迪纳与侯赛因•哈布雷交叉质询时,更是勇气倍增。

美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马赞扬塞内加尔起诉哈布雷的努力,美国表示愿意以100万美元资助诉讼费。当然,奥巴马政府在满足美国利益的前提下,也曾经支持过独裁政府。2011年,里根总统在三十年前开始帮助利比亚叛军驱逐卡扎菲的工作终于结束了。吹毛求疵者或许会认为,华盛顿对乍得司法进展的赞扬多少是在粉饰自己多年来对暴君的支持——从1990年11月30日哈布雷逃亡开始。

在恩贾梅纳即将被伊德里斯•代比的叛军攻陷的那天晚上,大卫•福尔德斯上校冲出美国使馆,赶往首都郊外的中央情报局训练营。这位美国国防武官必须尽快撤离200名利比亚“第五纵队”队员,在他们与卡扎菲武装的代比部队发生冲突之前,中央情报局一直在秘密训练他们。他整理好武器,把这些人装上卡车,直奔机场。这些人被塞在美国C-141运输机上,人挨人站着飞出这个国家。至于美国给哈布雷的针刺导弹,没人知道最终落在哪里。后来,它们被发现藏在乍得国防部楼梯下的角落里,一件不少。

侯赛因•哈布雷给他的国家留下的是一片狼藉——无论从物质上还是精神上说。数万名乍得人在他的统治下死于酷刑和与利比亚人的战争。我曾经采访过一名受害者,他是一名反对党政客,名叫加里•贾塔•格斯,这个人形象地解释了哈布雷的恐怖政权依然在笼罩。加里曾经是独裁者的顾问,1988年他因抗议而辞职,1990年因散发传单呼吁结束暴政、解散文献安全指挥部而被捕入狱。他遭受了严厉的酷刑,分别被关押在碧池和警察局(干瓜因也在那里被监禁一年)。有一次,文献安全指挥部的头子在审问加里,步话机里直接传出哈布雷的命令。加里是个大块头、和善的人,有一头卷发和温暖的笑容,但是他在我们谈话是落下眼泪:“即使现在,我们在谈话,我也非常恐惧。我被控制了……这很危险。哈布雷的政权彻底分裂了乍得社会,摧毁了乍得社会,即使我们现在的生活也是在侯赛因•哈布雷统治的余威之下。”

查理•迪费尔认为乍得是一个具有警世效果的故事。我和他在联合国总部附近的一间酒吧吃饭时,他说:“这个先例让卡扎菲有所收敛吗?我不知道。”他沉默了一下,接着说:“如果我们从一开始就袖手旁观,结果和现在会有所不同吗?”侯赛因•哈布雷杀死了1万名利比亚士兵,但卡扎菲依然掌权了二十年。“在十年后回顾这些国防举措,你会问:‘这值得吗?’看看越南、看看十年后的伊拉克,本•拉登?‘恐怖战争’?我们花了一万亿美元就是为了在一个人的脑袋上画一个50美分硬币大小的圆圈?所有人都说这是一个伟大的成就,我不知道。”










原文:

America championed a bloodthirsty torturer to fight the original war on terror. Now, he is finally being brought to justice.

On the last night of november 1990, the city of N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, was on edge. President Hissène Habré, who had seized control of the country in a coup eight years earlier, was in power -- but the vise was closing.

Rebels were converging on the city in Toyota pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and packed with fighters -- turbaned against the dust and sand, armed to the teeth, and screaming pedal-to-the-floor across the desert. Supplied and funded by Libya, they had crossed into Chad from their camp on the Sudanese border some 700 miles to the east, led by Habré’s former chief military advisor, Idriss Déby.

It was an odd time, then, for a diplomatic dinner party.

The gathering was a last-minute affair organized by the wealthy and well-connected Lebanese consul at the urgent personal request of a key minister in Habré’s cabinet. The presence of some two dozen Chadian elites, French businessmen, and notable expats was really just a ruse to invite the one guest who really mattered: Col. David G. Foulds, the U.S. defense attaché.

The minister pulled Foulds to a quiet corner. “He was chain-smoking -- extremely nervous, shaking all over,” Foulds recalled. Habré’s forces had beaten back Déby’s rebels once before, and conventional wisdom, including in Washington, which had long been star-struck by Habré’s military prowess, was that they’d prevail again. But the Americans knew little more than the optimistic picture Habré’s camp was giving them, and the minister knew better. The rebels could reach the capital that night, he said, much sooner than anticipated.

Foulds excused himself and rushed to inform the ambassador, Richard Bogosian, and the CIA’s chief-of-station. They lit up the phones to Washington to seek instructions and, if possible, assistance. “The bottom line is that he was worth saving,” Bogosian said of Habré. “He helped us in ways not everybody was willing to.”

Throughout the 1980s, The “quintessential desert warrior” had been the centerpiece of the Reagan administration’s effort to undermine  Muammar al-Qaddafi. If Habré were overthrown, that effort would be undone.the man the CIA had dubbed the “quintessential desert warrior” had been the centerpiece of the Reagan administration’s covert effort to undermine Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi, who had become an increasing threat and embarrassment to the United States with his support for international terrorism. Despite persistent and increasingly alarming reports of extrajudicial executions, disappearances, and prison abuse carried out by Habré’s regime, the CIA and the State Department’s Africa bureau had secretly armed Habré and trained his security service in exchange for the dictator’s commitment to ruthlessly pound the Libyan troops then occupying northern Chad. If Habré were overthrown, that near-decade-long effort would be undone.

The inevitable flood of Libyan intelligence agents into N’Djamena posed a more immediate threat as well: Against the impassioned protests of some U.S. officials, the CIA had given Habré a dozen Stinger missiles, the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapon sought by rebels and terrorists everywhere. Qaddafi had already demonstrated an interest in downing civilian aircraft. The Stingers absolutely could not be allowed to fall into his hands.  

And there was another issue: The CIA had established a secret camp a few miles outside the capital where it was training a vanguard of anti-Qaddafi Libyan fighters -- at least 200 men with CIA-supplied arms, including Soviet-made tanks, that they would not easily give up. A battle in the capital between Déby’s Qaddafi-sponsored fighters and the agency’s anti-Qaddafi forces would precipitate a bloodbath.

In the hours after the dinner party, pandemonium broke out in the streets as rumors of the collapse of Habré’s defenses spread through N’Djamena. Tribal rivalries -- always a dangerous variable in Chad’s post-colonial ethnic mosaic of Christians in the South and Muslim groups in the North (each with mutable allegiances and hatreds) -- had been whipped into a frenzy. Habré’s fellow Goran tribesmen had lived large during his tenure and were racing en masse to get out of town, their vehicles laden with loot, ahead of Déby’s Zaghawa fighters, who had been moved to rebellion by the Habré regime’s brutal repression.

At the U.S. Embassy, Foulds donned a flak jacket and placed a loaded shotgun within reach. Then, afraid the embassy might be overrun, he and his operations coordinator set to shredding classified documents and destroying sensitive communications equipment as the first wave of rebels entered the city. The CIA station chief was doing the same on a separate floor.  

Meanwhile, Bogosian took an urgent call from Washington: A pair of C-141 military transport planes was spun up and loaded with weapons, ammunition, and other matériel, ready to fly from the United States to assist in Habré’s defense. “[T]hey were on the tarmac ready to go,” Bogosian said. “We called back and said, ‘Don’t bother. It’s too late.’”

Habré, who had never been known to shy from a fight, saw the writing on the wall. Late that night, the “quintessential desert warrior” reportedly drove his Mercedes straight onto one of the Lockheed L-100 Hercules transport planes he’d gotten from the United States, loaded his close aides, and took off. After a stop in Cameroon, he landed in Dakar, Senegal, an exile thought to have been arranged by French intelligence. Chad is one of the poorest nations in Africa, yet its former leader reportedly used what he’d pilfered from his country’s coffers to create a luxurious web of security in Dakar: bribes for politicians, religious leaders, journalists, and police -- and two mansions. There, he would be safe for many years.

But not forever. As the main body of Déby’s fighters consolidated control of N’Djamena the following morning, scores of inmates from Habré’s secret prisons simply walked out of their cells, no longer guarded by Habré henchmen. Political prisoners poured onto the streets, emaciated, scarred by torture, and filled with tales of executions, mass graves, and unspeakable abuse. One of the men who staggered outside that morning was Souleymane Guengueng. He was a former accountant, nearly blind and barely alive after almost two and a half years of imprisonment and torture. In 2013, he would prove to be Habré’s undoing.

Part 2

1999: Victim of the Terror

Hissène Habré had attracted the attention of human rights advocates worldwide almost as soon as he took power in 1982, with Amnesty International publishing its first report on political killings in Chad within a year of his ascent to the presidency. But for decades he was, in essence, untouchable. As Chad’s president, he had the support of the most powerful country in the world, and, while in exile, he was protected by the longstanding international tradition of lifetime immunity for former heads of state. Immunity inherently contradicted -- but had all too often won out over -- the United Nations Convention against Torture, which obligates signatory states to prosecute accused torturers or extradite them to countries that would.   

The indictment represented a fraction of the abuses attributed to Pinochet, but it was enough to send cheers through the human rights community and shockwaves through conservative diplomatic circles. “Henceforth, all former heads of government are potentially at risk,” railed former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, decrying the assault on diplomatic immunity -- in this case, of a leader she considered a friend. “This is the Pandora’s box which has been opened -- and unless Senator Pinochet returns safely to Chile, there will be no hope of closing it.”

That’s just what Reed Brody was thinking.

A Brooklyn native and former New York assistant attorney general, Brody was then the advocacy director at Human Rights Watch in Manhattan. He’s a lawyer who relishes the adversarial nature of the profession, and, as he watched the Pinochet news break on CNN, his brain started churning, seized with the possibilities. “We had been in Rome just a couple of months earlier drafting the statute of the International Criminal Court” -- the first permanent criminal court with the authority to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes -- “and here was a real case,” Brody said.

The Pinochet arrest marked the first time European judges had applied the principle of universal jurisdiction, which enables courts to try a person accused of the most serious violations of international law, regardless of the defendant’s nationality or where the crime was committed. In the case of Pinochet, the overriding judicial question, to be decided in the House of Lords -- at the time, the highest legal body in the land -- was whether Britain’s obligations under the U.N. Convention against Torture compelled his extradition to Spain, overriding the customary legal immunity.

Brody, who had investigated Pinochet-era human rights abuses in Central America, flew to London to advise the prosecution on behalf of Human Rights Watch. And, in November 1998, in a dramatic verdict read to a packed courtroom, the judges ruled against the Chilean strongman. As one British jurist explained, in what would become the defining sentiment of the judgment: “[T]orture and hostage-taking are not acceptable conduct on the part of anyone. This applies as much to heads of state, or even more so, as it does to everyone else; the contrary conclusion would make a mockery of international law.”

With Pinochet's arrest, Pandora’s box had been opened, and a tantalizing question buzzed through the human rights community: “Who’s next?”Pandora’s box had been opened, and a tantalizing question buzzed through the human rights community: “Who’s next?”2

As a law student at Columbia, Brody had been highly influenced by one professor’s dissection of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s strategy for upending racial segregation. “They went for the easiest cases first, one by one, leading up to Brown v. Board of Education,” Brody told me over Korean food near the Human Rights Watch offices in the Empire State Building. Home in New York after the Pinochet verdict, he decided to take the same measured approach. Brody wanted a case he could win.

The suggestion that grabbed him came from his friend and former colleague, Peter Rosenblum, then the associate director of Harvard Law School’s human rights program. He left a message from a hotel room in N’Djamena: “I’ve got your next case,” he said. “Habré. Chad.” Brody saw the possibilities right away. Though he knew little about Hissène Habré or Chad, he knew that Senegal, Habré’s supposed safe haven, made the ex-dictator vulnerable.

Senegal had been the first country to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and had signed the U.N. Convention against Torture. If Brody could bring a torture case against Habré, Senegal would be compelled to try or extradite him. “It’s a country that’s always considered itself to be in the avant-garde of international law and human rights,” Brody said. “We figured if any country was going to be a candidate to take on an international justice case, Senegal would be that country.”

In 1999, Rosenblum introduced Brody to an intense young Chadian lawyer studying at Columbia. Delphine Djiraibe was one of Chad’s first female attorneys. She warned Brody that, even nine years after Habré’s downfall, the capital was still crawling with the dictator’s henchmen -- they staffed the airport, the customs office, the police force. If Brody were to proceed -- and she was over the moon at the prospect -- he would have to be extremely careful. Witnesses would be afraid to talk. A misstep would put Chadian intelligence on alert. After all, the president, Idriss Déby, had been Habré’s confidant before turning against him.

An avid chess player, Brody decided to push his pawns out first. Two fellows at Harvard’s human rights program, both young lawyers who had studied under Rosenblum, agreed to travel to Chad, ostensibly to research a controversial Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline project. Nicolas Seutin, from Belgium, and his Spanish colleague, Genoveva Hernandez Uriz, arrived in N’Djamena in monsoon season with a $4,000 stipend from Harvard, a few contacts from Djiraibe, and an agreement between themselves that they would pursue their work on the case in secret.

Djiraibe had arranged for them to stay inconspicuously in N’Djamena’s Catholic mission -- Seutin with the priests and Hernandez across the road with the nuns. They had no car, so they walked through the capital’s unpaved, muddy streets looking for witnesses’ homes. “We had a sense that we were being followed,” Hernandez told me, and she and Seutin found that people were palpably afraid to talk about the Habré days.

Souleymane Guengueng, tortured at the hands of the Habré regime, has been instrumental in bringing the dictator to justice.

Souleymane Guengueng, in contrast, answered their knock at his door not with the trepidation they’d seen in the few other victims they’d managed to meet, but with an enveloping smile. “He was very emotional, saying he’d been waiting for this moment for so long,” Hernandez recalled. “He said it was the hand of God that sent us.” So the two students sat with him in his garden and listened to the story he’d been burning for so long to tell.

Aug. 3, 1988, had been a slow day at the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the intergovernmental organization where Guengueng worked as an accountant. He looked up from his desk with alarm: His wife, Ruda, rarely came to his workplace, but there she was, crying and scared, pregnant with their seventh child. Plainclothes agents from Habré’s dreaded intelligence service, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), had come to the house looking for him. She begged him to hide.

He barely had time to reassure her when the agents arrived at his office, rolling up in a trademark DDS Toyota. They ordered Guengueng to get his motorbike; he would be made to drive himself to his own arrest, one of the agents sitting behind him. As they set off, Guengueng saw his cousin in the DDS car, also under arrest.

Guengueng was taken to the office of the DDS’s deputy chief of intelligence. “The first question was what religion I believed in,” he recalled. “I said I am Christian. He said he, too -- he’s a Christian. He told me to tell him the truth -- only the truth. If not, he had many ways of obliging me.”

The DDS officer asked him if he knew why he was there. When Guengueng said no, he got a slap. He was then accused of collaborating with his cousin to provide money and shelter to anti-Habré figures during a period when Guengueng had lived across the border in Cameroon. (The entire Lake Chad Basin Commission staff had been temporarily relocated there during a particularly violent period in Chad.) Guengueng had regularly welcomed other Chadian refugees into his Cameroon home, but the charge that he had been an opposition agent sheltering subversives struck him as so ridiculous he laughed.

A soldier standing guard suddenly slammed him in the head with the butt of his rifle.

Guengueng was dragged to a cell, disappearing into a horrific purgatory.Guengueng was dragged to a cell, disappearing into a horrific purgatory. Over two and half years, the gentle bookkeeper would be held in three different jails -- first in solitary confinement, then packed so tightly with other prisoners he couldn’t lie down to sleep, unless someone died. Which they did, every night, at which point the living would sleep on top of the dead. When the guards deemed the body count high enough to justify the effort -- five or six -- they would remove the corpses. In a long, moving interview in N’Djamena recently, Clément Abaifouta, Guengueng’s friend and fellow former inmate, described being forced daily over four years to bury hundreds of prisoners claimed by execution or illness.3

Guengueng was nearly among them. “Three times I lost my will to live,” he told me. “I was very seriously sick.” Guengueng’s ailments were common among political prisoners: malaria, dengue fever, and hepatitis. He was held alternately in total darkness and in unrelenting electric light, 24 hours a day for months on end. For several months, he lost the ability to walk. The worst, however, came after he was caught leading prayers for the prisoners: Guards hung him by his testicles.  

“I was thinking, ‘What can I do if God spares me?’” Guengueng told me. That night, he made a silent pact: If he survived, he would dedicate his life to telling the truth about what Hissène Habré had done to Chad. Recounting his story years later, Guengueng had Brody’s emissaries, the young Harvard law students, nearly in tears.

“And then he just says it,” Seutin recalled. “He’d been taking testimonies.”

Hidden in the back of Guengueng’s house were 792 witness accounts that he’d gently coaxed out of fellow prison survivors in the years immediately after Habré was overthrown. They cover three campaigns of ethnically targeted repression during which, suspicious of disloyalty, Habré had allegedly ordered collective punishment of entire tribes -- a cornerstone of his always brutal, ever-evolving consolidation of power. The witness testimonies describe an array of tortures, including waterboarding, forced asphyxiation on the tailpipe of a car, and the infamous “Arbatachar” method -- in which all four limbs are bound behind the victim’s back, the cord yanked tight until the chest is thrust forward, hyperextended as far as possible, leaving some deformed, paralyzed, or without the use of limbs.

Former Habré regime members who had remained in N’Djamena after the dictator fled, many still in positions of power, had eventually gotten wind of Guengueng’s efforts, however, and threatened his life. So Guengueng had hidden the documents, hoping for a better day, he told the lawyers. With their arrival, he said, that day had now come.

“In that moment, we knew there was a case here. We were very excited,” Hernandez recalled. “We thought we had hard evidence now and that this could be the seed for judicial action.”

She and Seutin were also scared. They bought paper for Guengueng, and he surreptitiously copied the files at his office. Seutin hid them in the laundry room of the monastery, but he and Hernandez had no idea how to get them out of Chad. Carrying them out through the airport in their luggage was discussed and discounted as too dangerous. They met with a political officer at the U.S. Embassy who offered to move the files via diplomatic pouch, but something about the offer felt shady, and they walked away.

Hernandez had to leave Chad before they’d found a solution. A few nights later, Seutin made an impulsive decision: Despite the risks, he took one of the senior priests into his confidence, packed the documents in his bags, and asked for a ride to the airport. He began to regret his rashness from the moment he stepped up to the Air Afrique desk to change his ticket, issued for several days later, to that night’s flight. The desk agent inspecting his ticket, suddenly suspicious, suggested (erroneously) that the original was a forgery. Fighting panic as he argued with the agent, Seutin glanced over at security; customs officials were randomly opening suitcases and rummaging through them.

Then, the weird altercation with the Air Afrique agent subsided as inexplicably as it had begun. Seutin got in line with his document-crammed bag. The officials continued to select luggage for inspection. He got to the front of the line and … just got lucky. “By the next morning, I was in Paris, and the documents were out of the country.”

Part 3

1982: Habré Seizes Power

The Overseas French Territories House at La Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris was better known, in the post-colonial moment of the late 1960s and early ’70s, as “Maison de l’Afrique” -- the Africa House. It was a hotbed of revolutionary politics, with young African students gathering daily from universities across the city to discuss Marx, Fanon, and Che, and to debate the civil wars then sweeping their home continent.

There were few Chadian students, but they were highly engaged. During 60 years of colonial neglect, the French had divided their country along north-south lines: The cotton-producing, Christian South was known as “Le Tchad Utile” -- “Useful Chad” -- while the arid, predominately Muslim North was written off as “Le Tchad Inutile.” The French utterly disregarded deep historical animosities between Chad’s ethnic and regional groups, leaving the country ripe for civil war when they withdrew in 1960. By 1965, Chad roiled violently amid widespread resentment of the first post-independence president, François Tombalbaye, a Southerner. Muslims from the North were particularly bitter, and some gathered to hone their revolutionary thinking in Paris.

Hissène Habré was their coolest customer, known for an economy of speech, but orating with electric intensity when he deigned. Born into a family of Northern shepherds, the intelligent young man was singled out by a French military commander and went to Paris on a scholarship to study political science at the Institute of Overseas Higher Studies. He stayed to earn a doctorate, but he always had his eye on returning to Chad. “He was very calm. Very tough in his position … qualities that set him in the front line of the movement” to end the South’s hegemony, said Acheikh Ibn-Oumar, who overlapped with Habré as a student in Paris before going back to Chad, where he emerged as a guerrilla leader and politician in his own right.

In 1971, Habré returned to his native country, briefly joining the civil service before relocating to the vast, arid expanse of northern Chad to build a militia and lay the groundwork for his political future. Encamped with his fighters in the volcanic cave formations of the barely populated Tibesti Mountains, some 500 miles from the capital, Habré cultivated a reputation for hardness. In 1974, he announced himself to the West by taking a blue-eyed French archeologist, Françoise Claustre, hostage -- holding her for nearly three years and captivating the international press by murdering a French army captain sent to negotiate her release.

“The impression he gave me,” said Ibn-Oumar of meeting Habré again back in Chad, “was that he was really burning inside with the desire to conquer and retain power.” He would nearly burn down N’Djamena in the process.

In 1979, Habré was named defense minister in a transitional government cobbled together by Chad’s neighbors -- an attempt to bring no fewer than 11 Chadian fighting factions together. Elections were scheduled, but Habré couldn’t wait. He launched his first bid to take the presidential palace by force in March 1980, raining rockets down on the capital from multi-piped “Stalin organ” launchers, a mobile weapon known for the bloodcurdling sound it made as it spat out Katyusha rockets in quick succession.

Habré did not prevail, but ferocious fighting between his forces and those aligned with the transitional government leader, interim President Goukouni Oueddei, lasted more than nine months, leaving some 5,000 Chadians dead and N’Djamena divided in a blood-soaked stalemate.

Then, the situation suddenly changed. Oueddei used a lifeline: He called Muammar al-Qaddafi, who was gaining notoriety as a key sponsor of terrorism. The Libyan dictator was happy to intervene. Qaddafi’s vast oil revenues -- much of which, ironically, came from business with U.S. companies -- gave him latitude to pursue his expansionist ambitions. Chad was the perfect launching pad for his vision of Pan-Africanism, in which he would erase colonial-era borders. The country abuts not only Libya, but also Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Sudan -- the latter a key U.S. ally at the time and the largest African recipient of American aid after Egypt. (Sudan was the only Arab country to stand by Egypt’s Anwar Sadat after he signed the Camp David Accords with Israel.)

By November 1980, some 4,000 Libyan troops had poured into Chad. By December, they’d occupied two-thirds of the country, including N’Djamena. Habré and his forces were run out of the country into Sudan and Cameroon. In January 1981, Oueddei and Qaddafi alarmed the West and its African allies by announcing a potential Libya-Chad merger.

Halfway across the world, Ronald Reagan had just become president of the United States. Determined to regain the American prestige lost during the Iran hostage crisis that had bedeviled Jimmy Carter until literally his last minutes in office, Reagan immediately designated international terrorism as a primary threat to world order. Speaking from the South Lawn a week into his presidency, he said, “Let terrorists beware that when the rules of international behavior are violated, our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution.”

Reagan didn’t mention Qaddafi by name, but he may as well have. Soon after his inauguration, Reagan signed a secret presidential finding: Qaddafi would not be allowed to control Chad. And so it was that one of the poorest countries in the world was designated the primary battleground in the original “war on terror.”

Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey, and Secretary of State Alexander Haig quickly coalesced around the idea of launching a covert war in partnership with Habré to “bloody Qaddafi’s nose” and “increase the flow of pine boxes back to Libya” on America’s behalf, as Haig put it. In short order, Reagan released several million dollars of covert support for Habré -- a fraction of what was to come.

The first step was to put Habré in the presidential palace.

The CIA’s station chief in Khartoum, a French speaker, made the initial approach, meeting Habré and his advisors in Sudan. Soon, weapons and cash were wending their way to Habré’s rebel camp on the Chad-Sudan border. The CIA would send supplies through regional allies to Khartoum; then Sudanese intelligence, which was closely allied with the CIA, would move them by train to Nyala, the former British Administration Headquarters in Darfur, where Habré would pick them up and drive them across the border.

The possibility that the assistance would help Habré terrorize his own people was hardly considered. “Little to no attention was paid to the human rights issues at the time for three reasons,” a former U.S. intelligence official who worked with Habré explained in an email. “(1) We wanted the Libyans out and Habré was the only reliable instrument at our disposal, (2) Habré’s record suffered only from the kidnapping (the Claustre Affair), which we were content to overlook, and (3) Habré was a good fighter, needed no training, and all we had to do was supply him with matériel.”

A photo taken on Aug. 16, 1983, shows Habré during a press conference in N'Djamena.

On June 7, 1982, Habré and 2,000 of his fighters fought their way into N’Djamena and declared the founding of Chad’s “Third Republic.” He consolidated power with brute force from the beginning: POWs from rival militant groups were executed, political opponents were captured and shot, and civilians thought to be sympathetic toward his opponents were targeted in reprisal operations. Oueddei fled to Libya, where Qaddafi would retrain and rearm his forces. And soon the United States was ferrying C-141 StarLifters loaded with weapons to Chad to arm Habré for the next step in its proxy war with Libya.

At the forefront of this effort was a resourceful young civil service officer named Charles Duelfer, perhaps best known today for his role on the Iraq Survey Group, which investigated U.S. intelligence failures concerning Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. By the early 1980s, he’d already cultivated good contacts at Langley, and he welcomed projects that got him out of the office -- way out of the office. Liaising with Habré’s forces was the perfect assignment.

“I became known as ‘Charlie Chad,’” Duelfer told me. In 1982, he was at the State Department’s Political-Military Bureau -- “a little Pentagon and CIA at State,” as he described it -- and worked with Reagan’s influential assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker. His primary task vis-à-vis Chad was to buddy up with a CIA contact and beg, borrow, and steal as much matériel as possible to airlift to Habré. “There was a mix of things that made a lot of sense, some of which were U.S.-manufactured, and most of which were not,” Duelfer said. “The RPG-7 was a great thing: Point-and-shoot, it’s simple. But we can’t get those from the Pentagon. You have to do that in other ways. Use your imagination.” His CIA counterpart -- a bit older, a Vietnam vet -- would arrange the purchase of Warsaw Pact armaments through Egyptian and Sudanese intelligence.

With the help of Crocker’s agile deputy, experienced Africa hand James Bishop, Duelfer raided Pentagon stocks under the cover of paragraph 506-A in the Foreign Assistance Act, which authorized “emergency drawdowns.” “The Pentagon hated that. We would steal 106 mm recoilless rifles -- whatever we could find that was useful -- and fly it over there, and it would be billed to the Pentagon,” Duelfer said. Their first big run, flying from Dover Air Force Base, consisted of 10 jeeps with rifles welded to the chassis, along with stocks of high-explosive ammunition and fléchette rounds. Bishop’s office invoked the emergency drawdown authority so effectively in support of Habré that his team later gifted him a model C-141 with “506-A” stenciled on the tail.

A few years into the Reagan administration, “"There were times that the N’Djamena Airport looked like Rhein-Main. We were running an airlift in that place you wouldn’t believe.”there were times that the N’Djamena Airport looked like Rhein-Main,” said John Propst Blane, who served as U.S. ambassador in Chad from 1985 to 1988, referring to the massive Cold War air base in West Germany. “I mean, I had C-5s and C-141s lined up on that runway. We were running an airlift in that place you wouldn’t believe,” he recalled in an oral history of American diplomacy.

For Habré, the first real military crisis of his presidency hit in the summer of 1983 as Oueddei’s forces, with Libyan support, launched an offensive in northern Chad, capturing the crucial city of Faya-Largeau, Habré’s hometown. Qaddafi sent Libyan paramilitaries and Libyan air force jets to attack Habré’s positions. “I only saw [Habré’s] self-control crack once or twice,” said Peter Moffat, who spent three and a half years in Chad, first as chargé d’affaires, then as ambassador. This, he told me, was the only time he ever saw Habré show fear.

In response, the Duelfer-Bishop-Crocker shop spun up a covert shipment that included 30 Redeye man-portable surface-to-air missiles, and American trainers were sent to work with Habré’s troops. Two AWACs surveillance planes, a contingent of F-15s, and tanker aircraft, along with some 600 U.S. support personnel, were deployed to Sudan to assist Habré’s counteroffensive. Reagan approved $25 million in overt emergency aid, and an American diplomat was sent quietly to Paris to get then-President François Mitterrand to back Habré.

Meanwhile, a senior CIA operative in Nigeria met with a local intelligence contact and placed a cash order for a couple dozen Toyota Hilux pickups, which were quietly delivered to Habré’s people. The CIA trucks, mounted with 12.7 mm heavy machine guns, would ultimately prove decisive in Habré’s encounters with the Libyans.

Zakaria, who asked that I use only his first name, fought with Oueddei’s troops as a 21-year-old conscript at Faya-Largeau. He told me he remembers the Toyotas indelibly: They swooped in from the north at such manic speeds, Habré’s fighters loosing such a storm of fire, that they caused mass panic in the rebel ranks. Just as suddenly, a second surge of Habré fighters attacked from the south, anticipating -- and decimating -- a column of reinforcements. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had shown Habré “line drawings” (illustrations based on overhead imagery) of the enemy’s positions ahead of the attack. Oueddei’s fighters didn’t stand a chance.

Habré’s forces celebrated their victory by roping enemy fighters behind the Toyotas, several to a bumper, and dragging them through the desert, said Zakaria. Wearing a military uniform, Habré appeared and ordered captured fighters from specific towns -- singled out for tribal affiliation -- to stand. Zakaria was too badly injured to get up, which saved his life: Some 150 fighters were loaded into trucks, taken into the desert, and executed.

A week after Habré’s win at Faya-Largeau, however, Qaddafi ordered regular Libyan troops into combat, dramatically escalating the conflict. Libyan jets bombed Habré’s forces, and Oueddei’s forces, with direct help from the Libyans, retook Faya-Largeau and then proceeded to occupy all of northern Chad. Paris finally took action, deploying some 3,000 French paratroopers to draw a line in the sand at the 16th parallel, some 200 miles north of N’Djamena. But the Libyans would remain in the country for years.

For his part, Zakaria would spend the next four and a half years in Habré’s horrendous Maison d’Arrêt prison. Now in his 50s, he appeared in October 2012, dressed in a white turban and long desert robe, in the N’Djamena courtyard of a human rights group co-founded by Chadian attorney Delphine Djiraibe to offer his testimony. Reed Brody and a key colleague in the case he was assembling against Habré, French attorney Olivier Bercault, interviewed him for several hours, during which he described his treatment at Faya-Largeau, Habré’s personal role in ordering the executions of POWs, and, of course, the horrors of prison. “I’m very eager to testify against Hissène Habré,” Zakaria told me that day. “Everything I’ve just told you, I want to say to him.”

Part 4

2000: The First Indictment

“The Habré case was instant gratification at the very beginning,” Brody recalled 14 long years after it began, laughing. In the span of just over a month -- late January to early February 2000 -- Brody and his colleagues would file their first case against Habré in Senegal, Habré would be indicted and questioned for the first time, and the case would explode across the world press.

Reed Brody stands with lawyers and Chadian victims at the Dakar courthouse in January 2000.

The biggest concern as they maneuvered to prepare and file the case was that they not tip off their target. “When we began, we didn’t really know who was who -- who would give information back to Habré,” Brody explained. “We were really afraid … he would try to escape from Senegal.”

In a flurry of coded international calls and emails among New York, N’Djamena, and Dakar in January, Brody and his far-flung team made meticulous arrangements for “taking priests from Greece to a Jubilee party for the Cardinal in Rome.” “Greece” was Chad, the “priests” a carefully selected batch of Chadian victims of Habré’s regime. “Rome” was Dakar, and the “Cardinal” was Habré himself. The “Jubilee party” was the filing of the legal complaint in which his victims would formally accuse Habré of “torture, barbarous acts, and crimes against humanity.”

The victim testimonies, gathered by Souleymane Guengueng and spirited out of Chad in Nicolas Seutin’s luggage, comprised the documentary core of the filing. Guengueng and six other survivors -- representing Chad’s complex Muslim-Christian, north-south, and tribal divisions, and specifically the ethnic groups targeted by Habré -- traveled with the team to Senegal to be on hand if the judge requested their testimony. Fake invitations to a seminar in Dakar were wrangled so the Chadians could secure travel documents without tipping their hand.

The team converged in a dingy Dakar hotel. Guengueng knocked on Brody’s door on the eve of the filing. “Tall and thin, his face then dominated by thick, bottle-cap eyeglasses, he exuded a serious determination,” Brody wrote in an unpublished firsthand account he shared with me. “I realized that his life’s goal -- bringing Hissène Habré to justice -- was now set in motion.… He told me that he was ‘in this to the end’ and asked if I was too. I told him that I felt privileged to work with someone like him and that I would do all that I could.”

Lawyer Boukounta Diallo (left); Reed Brody (second from left); William Bourdon, secretary-general of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) (third form left); and lawyer Sidiki Kaba walk to court in January 2000, in Dakar to register a case against Habré.

They filed the case on Jan. 26. Two days later, the senior investigating judge summoned the Chadians to tell their stories in a closed-door session. The press, tipped off by Brody, swarmed the witnesses as they left the hearing, and the case made headlines across Africa.

Four days after that, the judge indicted Habré, placing him briefly under house arrest. A New York Times editorial, “An African Pinochet,” hailed “a welcome new chapter in the evolution of international criminal law.”2

Immediately after the team filed the charges, the French ambassador to Senegal offered the Chadian witnesses temporary asylum in Paris, convinced they’d be in grave danger upon returning home. Everyone turned to Guengueng, who took a beat before speaking.

“Before coming to Dakar to file this case, I decided I was ready to die,” he told the rapt French envoy. “I will return to Chad tomorrow, and if I am killed when I get off the plane, I will die a hero.”

Guengueng was not killed upon returning to Chad. Human Rights Watch gave him an award, which came with a $10,000 prize, and flew him to the United States for a Human Rights Watch fundraising tour. The humble Chadian bookkeeper was feted by the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Joan Baez, and Nancy Pelosi at highbrow events in New York and California. Guengueng even addressed 1,000 supporters at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, all with Brody at his side. His story built widespread support for the case.

During the trip, Brody contacted the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, which arranged for surgeries to remove cataracts in both of Guengueng’s eyes. Through the months of his treatment, he lived with Brody’s family in Brooklyn and, as Brody recounted, was soon beating everyone at Monopoly. He even went sledding with Brody’s son Zac, the first time he saw snow. He’d return to Chad all the more focused on pressing the case he believed was his purpose in life.

Part 5

1987: Victory in the Desert

In the murky English evening of April 14, 1986, an armada of 58 American military aircraft lifted off from four British bases and flew south. Hours later, as the formation of bombers, electronic warfare planes, and tankers crossed over the Mediterranean, silent but for occasional radio checks, two U.S. aircraft carriers below began catapulting fighter jets into the night.

The electronic warfare planes struck first, at 1:50 a.m. Tripoli time, scrambling Qaddafi’s sophisticated air-defense network with noise. Then, attack jets unleashed a barrage of HARM and Shrike missiles. Over 12 minutes, U.S. bombers attacked a Tripoli airfield, a Libyan naval academy, and the Bab al-Azizia compound, where Qaddafi was staying with his wife and children. Simultaneously, 12 fighter jets swarmed over Benghazi and Benina, destroying military barracks and an airfield. Some 37 Libyans, including civilians, were killed, as well as two U.S. Air Force captains whose F-111 fighter-bomber was shot down.

The proximate rationale for the attack was the terrorist bombing of a West Berlin discotheque just over a week before, which killed two U.S. servicemen and was credited to Qaddafi based on telex intercepts in which Tripoli congratulated Libyan agents in East Berlin for a job well done. More broadly, the attack represented the Reagan administration’s welling impulse to lash out after a spate of terrorist attacks in the early ’80s left it looking as helpless as the Carter administration it had criticized.

Operation Eldorado Canyon, as the strike was known, was dramatic, but Reagan’s proxy war via Habré would kill 200 times as many Libyan troops and claim $1.5 billion of Libyan military equipment at a fraction of the cost, with means so basic that the final phase of the Chadian-Libyan conflict would be known simply as the “Toyota War.”

Libya’s protracted occupation of northern Chad was no less humiliating for Habré than Qaddafi’s terrorism was to the Reagan administration. As many as 10,000 Libyan troops controlled huge swaths of the country, and by 1986, Libyan-supported rebels were making provocative thrusts toward the capital, violating the 16th parallel. The Libyan air force was flying sorties from the Aouzou Strip, their long-held slice of Chadian territory in the country’s far north, and had also built a huge, threatening air base in a Chadian outpost called Wadi Doum.

In response, France, which had withdrawn its troops in a pact with Qaddafi in late 1984, sent a new, mostly defensive contingent of attack aircraft, special forces, and 1,000 troops (a presence that today remains key in France’s Mali operations). They made a brief bombing run on Wadi Doum, then holed up, advising Habré to do the same lest he provoke Qaddafi into overrunning N’Djamena.

Habré’s American friends were giving different advice.

“I met with the president almost daily, at least three or four times a week … and we worked together, I think, obviously successfully,” said Ambassador Blane. “His one objective, his only objective, during my period of service there, was to get rid of the Libyans. That’s all he thought about.” The United States increased its arms shipments to Habré, and in response to Libyan overflights of N’Djamena, the CIA called on then-friend Saddam Hussein to provide a flash shipment of Soviet-made high-altitude SA-2 surface-to-air missiles -- “enough to defend an airport,” said a senior American official involved in the deal.

Meanwhile, Habré was chomping at the bit for two of the hottest-ticket and closest-held items in the U.S. arsenal: the portable FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile and the BGM-71 TOW wire-guided anti-tank missile. “He kept hammering away: Need Stingers, need TOWs. Need Stingers, need TOWs,” said the senior official. “Maybe we shouldn’t have done it, but we did: We gave him Stingers. We gave him TOWs.”

A Chadian soldier stands in front of a machine-gun-mounted military Land Rover near Kalait on April 5, 1987. Habré's troops had used trucks with portable weapons to overrun Libyan troops in modern tanks a month earlier.

Habré launched his counteroffensive on Jan. 2, 1987. His fighters surged north and destroyed a heavily defended Libyan communications base in Fada, swarming the 1,000-man garrison from all sides in a series of lightning pincer moves. The Libyan defenses -- Soviet-made T-55 tanks and heavy artillery -- were useless in the unconventional assault. The Chadians fired MILAN anti-tank missiles from their pickup trucks at close range, killing the armored vehicles as they got stuck in the sand. Libyan crews started abandoning their tanks with the engines still running.

Meanwhile, Defense Intelligence Agency officers in Washington were transmitting the latest overhead views of Qaddafi’s order of battle -- troop locations, movements, minefields -- on then-state-of-the-art “WASHFAX” (Washington Area Secure High-Speed Facsimile System) machines. The intelligence was shared directly with Habré.  

Some 700 “panic-stricken” Libyan troops died, with 80 taken prisoner and 100 Libyan armored vehicles destroyed, and only 20 Chadian fighters killed, according to an account by a French army captain published in the Marine Corps Gazette.

In response, Qaddafi moved three battalions of troops and huge amounts of equipment to his air base at Wadi Doum. He’d quickly lose 800 of these troops -- two armored battalions -- in a Chadian ambush as the Libyans traveled from Wadi Doum to try to retake their garrison at Fada. The Chadians chased the stragglers back to Wadi Doum, driving -- guns blazing -- straight into the base.

The ensuing battle inside the wire at Wadi Doum was at madly close quarters: Chadian troops fired RPG-7s from 20 meters, killing tanks, but also themselves, according to the French captain, while their comrades blasted away “rapidly and instinctively” with rocket launchers, machine guns, and anti-tank missiles. The battle lasted two hours, leaving 1,300 Libyans and 200 Chadians dead.  

In September, Habré’s forces pushed over the border into Libya proper, sucker punching the Libyan air force on the ground. “They just totally wasted the air base. Just gone. All the airplanes on the ground,” Blane said. “They took a lot of people with them who could drive, obviously, because they brought back 600 trucks.”

They also brought back vast amounts of captured Soviet-made equipment -- a U.S. intelligence bonanza. “It was a big deal in those days to try to get access to Soviet equipment, figure out how it worked, how good was it, what radio frequencies did it use,” Duelfer said. There were intact Mi-25 helicopter gunships, an SA-6 mobile surface-to-air missile system, “spoon rest” radar arrays. Duelfer helped inventory the equipment, the most valuable of which was packed and shipped out on huge C-5 transport planes for dissection by U.S. and French intelligence analysts.

After the initial Chadian rout of Qaddafi’s forces at Wadi Doum, Blane received a cable from Washington: President Reagan wanted to shake President Habré’s hand in the Oval Office. They met in the White House on June 19, 1987.

“It went beautifully,” Blane recalled in the oral history. (He died in 2012.) “My wife came back with me and was with Mrs. Habré the whole time. Oh, it just went swimmingly. Mr. Habré and Mr. Reagan got along just dandily.”

Hissène Habré meets with Ronald Reagan at the White House in June 1987. The two got along "dandily," said John Propst Blane, former U.S. ambassador to Chad, in an oral history.

Reagan was no less effusive in his remarks after the meeting. “We believe the victories on the Chadian desert bode well for peace and stability in Africa,” he said. “Today President Habré emphasized that his government is committed to building a better life for the Chadian people.”

Habré returned to Chad and prosecuted two of the most deadly spasms of repression of his tenure. In 1987, when a military officer from the Hadjeraï tribe formed an opposition movement, government forces began a violent campaign of ethnic retribution. The attacks spread from Hadjeraï dignitaries and their families to the Hadjeraï population in general. The dictator was no less brutal in his violence against ethnic Zaghawas two years later, when one of their tribesmen, Habré’s close advisor Idriss Déby, broke with him. Again, he targeted civilians in collective retribution.1

Throughout this period, Habré continued to enjoy support from the U.S. governmentHabré continued to enjoy support from the U.S. government, and the CIA in particular, even as Washington’s fixation with Libya diminished -- and despite the growing denunciation from groups like Amnesty International of the horrific abuses in Chadian prisons. “There were allegations of thousands of people in unspeakable conditions in jail, literally across the street from the AID mission” -- that is, the local office of the U.S. Agency for International Development -- “which was later proven to be true,” said Bogosian, the U.S. ambassador at the time of Habré’s ousting. Nevertheless, he acknowledged, Hissène Habré unambiguously remained Washington’s man in N’Djamena. “There was, if you will, a certain momentum to our relationship.”

Part 6

2001: The Torture Papers

The early victories that graced Reed Brody’s pursuit of Hissène Habré did not last long, as the attorney quickly realized that getting the dictator into the dock was no less a matter of politics than of law.

On July 4, 2000 -- just a few months after Habré had been indicted in Dakar -- Brody was playing softball at an Independence Day party in upstate New York when he got an urgent call: The Senegalese judge who had charged Habré had been removed from the case. This set the stage for the case itself to be dropped, which it was -- first by Senegal’s Appeals Court and then, the following year, by its top court, which claimed to lack jurisdiction over crimes Habré had committed in Chad. The ruling was a blatant violation of Senegal’s commitments under the U.N. Convention against Torture.

It was, alas, the first of many setbacks in the quest to bring Habré to justice. The team’s elegant lead Chadian attorney, Jacqueline Moudeina -- one of the country’s most prominent lawyers -- was assaulted and gravely injured after she filed a parallel case in N’Djamena on behalf of 17 torture victims against all DDS agents who had worked for Habré’s regime. Former DDS officials, some still in high government positions, were called in for questioning -- something unheard of before in Chad. One of the accused had become a commissaire in the national police under Déby, and in June 2001, police attacked Moudeina, throwing a grenade that exploded between her legs. Brody, in the United States at the time, pulled together emergency funds to evacuate her to Paris for a series of surgeries.

Images of Torture

Sketches published in Chad's Commission of Inquiry report

Brody counterattacked on multiple fronts, stirring all the journalist contacts he had to pressure Senegal’s president at the time, Abdoulaye Wade, to live up to his commitments under the U.N. Convention against Torture. “I resolved … to make it the issue that would drive President Wade crazy,” Brody said. “Everywhere he went, he would hear about the case.”

More importantly, he began exploring alternative venues that could bring Habré to justice. On Nov. 30, 2000, Chadian victims who had relocated to Belgium filed a criminal complaint in Brussels under the country’s 1993 law of universal jurisdiction, which was based upon the same legal principle that had led to Pinochet’s arrest in England. In early 2002, a ponytailed judge from Brussels created a frenzy in Chad, traveling to N’Djamena with four strapping Belgian cops and a prosecutor to investigate the case, insisting on touring the former political prisons. It would take 12 years for this seed to bear fruit, but the Belgian intervention would prove pivotal.

The irony of the delay was profound because it persisted even as Brody uncovered damning new evidence.

A view from the inside of the Piscine, a colonial-era swimming pool turned underground prison.

On a hot day in May* 2001, Brody showed up outside the infamous Piscine, a colonial-era swimming pool that Habré’s DDS had turned into a sweltering underground prison in central N’Djamena -- perhaps the cruelest facility in Habré’s constellation of secret jails. Brody had come to Chad with a documentary film crew in tow and strong-armed the government into allowing the team to tour the abandoned cells. After filming in the Piscine1 -- the walls of which still scream with pleas for mercy that were etched by the souls condemned there -- and with cameras still rolling, the group asked to see the abandoned DDS headquarters next door.

With the trip, Brody had simply hoped to score some media points on behalf of the case. But in the old DDS building, he found himself unexpectedly -- and literally -- knee-deep in a massive trove of documents outlining the mechanics of the Habré regime’s inhumanity. Crumpled on the floor were thousands of pages from intelligence files. There were prisoner lists, arrest and interrogation reports, death certificates, spying reports -- a “forgotten and disheveled archive of Chad’s darkest period,” as Brody called it. Brody took advantage of the Déby government’s interest in distancing itself from the Habré regime and won permission to copy the documents. (The documentary, by Swiss journalist Pierre Hazan, would be called Chasseur de Dictateurs.)2

Back in New York, Human Rights Watch sent the DDS files to an outside statistician, who determined that they contain references to 1,208 prisoners who were executed or died in prison and 12,321 victims of gross human rights violations. The statistician also found that the DDS had directly sent Habré 1,265 communications about 898 prisoners.

One document, however, stood out for a different reason: It named 12 members of the DDS and Habré’s personal security detail who had been sent to the United States in 1985 for “special training” at a secret facility a couple hundred miles outside Washington, D.C.  

Bandjim Bandoum -- thick-bodied, round-faced former DDS agent -- was one of the dozen selected for U.S. training; his name is on the document Brody found. But his name is also on another list: In 1992, Chad’s Commission of Inquiry -- a limited indigenous attempt to outline the Habré regime’s crimes -- singled out 14 DDS agents as Habré’s most “pitiless” torturers, notorious among political prisoners “for their cruelty, sadism and inhumanity.”3 Bandoum was one of them. “He came often to the place I was detained and would joke and play with the women,” Ginette Ngarbaye, a former political prisoner, told me. “He took people away at night and killed them.”

Bandoum was careful about directly addressing the accusations when I met him at a cafe across from Gare du Nord in Paris in 2012 for two long interviews, but he was also palpably resolved to share his firsthand knowledge with the world. “There were 40,000-45,000 -- people killed. They are no less important than I am,” he said. “I want to bring Habré to justice. I can name names and clear up many things. I am ready to face justice as well for what I have done.”

To the dismay of eavesdropping diners at the next table, Bandoum outlined the architecture of the DDS and its culpability in mass atrocities: “During the night, prisoners were executed discreetly,” was one jaw-dropper; “I knew everyone that I arrested would be tortured” was another. He described how, after a prisoner underwent initial torture, he would then appear before a panel of 10 to 12 DDS agents, who would decide his fate.

Bandoum’s initiation to the dark side was in the South, where Habré faced a bitter, ongoing rebellion from the time he took power in 1982. Troops deployed there under the command of Idriss Déby, then Habré’s army chief of staff, were slaughtering thousands, summarily executing both rebels and civilians. Bandoum, a Southerner with a cousin among the rebels, was sent to gather intelligence and use his familial connections to forge a diplomatic back channel to rebel commanders.

In September 1984, a peace accord was reached, but Bandoum says that when the rebels he had convinced to lay down their arms emerged from hiding to sign the deal, Habré’s forces gunned them down. The slaughter marked the opening volley of what would become Chad’s darkest period of mass killings, known as “Septembre Noir,” in which government troops decimated whole villages thought to be sympathetic to rebel factions. It was on the heels of these atrocities that Bandoum was selected to go to the United States, praise for his services having passed from Déby’s lips directly to Habré, he told me.

The “special training” took place in 1985. The trainees flew to Paris, where they were met by American officials, who accompanied them on the second leg of their journey, to Dulles International Airport, outside Washington. From there, they took a private flight, curtains drawn across the plane’s windows. The bus that ferried them from the airfield to the training facility had blackened windows. Over 10 weeks, French-speaking Americans schooled Bandoum and his comrades in “anti-terrorism” -- identifying and handling explosives, learning the smell of chemicals associated with bomb-making, scanning for and defusing bombs, de-mining, and providing close protection. “They taught us to think like the terrorist,” he said.

The notion that Bandoum and his comrades might themselves be terrorizing their fellow countrymen, and as such might not have any business receiving American training and support, didn’t get much traction at the time.

“Real things were blowing up,” Duelfer recalled. In 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut had been bombed and a truck bomb had destroyed part of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. CIA Chief-of-Station William Buckley was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1984. The following month, Libyan agents firing from the country’s de facto consulate in London shot and killed a British policewoman and wounded 10 civilians. And, in September 1984, Qaddafi was linked to mines laid in the Suez Canal and a suitcase bomb sent to Chad in an attempt to kill Habré. The following year, Americans were killed when terrorists hijacked TWA, EgyptAir, and Kuwait Airlines planes; attacked Rome’s international airport; and commandeered the cruise ship Achille Lauro.

President Reagan, incensed at the wave of terrorism but relatively helpless, lashed out during a speech4 at the National Bar Association in July 1985, establishing priorities that trickled down: “The American people are not -- I repeat -- not going to tolerate intimidation, terror, and outright acts of war against this nation and its people. We are especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.”

Bandoum’s American training apparently served him (and the United States) well: He told me he was promoted to chief of the DDS’s counterterrorism unit and personally intercepted a Libyan suitcase bomb, after which a CIA officer named John came to his office to thank him and relieve him of the device. (A bomb had destroyed a French passenger jet just before it took off from N’Djamena in March 1984, and in September 1989, another bomb brought down a French jet within an hour of departing from Chad, killing all 171 people aboard, including Bonnie Pugh, the wife of then-U.S. Ambassador to Chad Robert Pugh. Libyan agents were implicated in the latter attack.)

But the strain of his less noble duties ultimately caught up to him. Exhausted by arresting and interrogating prisoners, Bandoum suffered a mental and physical breakdown in 1987 and had to be hospitalized. After being unable to work for more than a year, Bandoum applied for a passport. This raised the DDS’s suspicions; he was driven to the capital and hauled before a panel of 15 colleagues for a “very rough, very harsh” interrogation, accused of plotting against Habré. Afterward, he was thrown into a cell not far from his old DDS office.

The execution of prisoners from Bandoum’s cell always happened between 11 and 12 at night, he said. There were always three armed guards who came; Bandoum ran scenarios over and over in his mind about how to grab a weapon and kill at least one before they killed him. But when they finally did come for him, he found himself unable to resist. He marched toward his execution. Then, the scene turned weird: The head of the prison appeared, embraced Bandoum, and told him he was being let go.

Three days after his release, Bandoum was called in to meet the new DDS director, who offered him a job. Threatened with further detention if he did not accept, Bandoum returned to work. But he began passing information to contacts he had in the French military. Tired of the dictator’s brutality, Habré’s erstwhile backers in Paris wanted to know about the mass graves, extrajudicial killings, and prison camps. In 1990, they spirited Bandoum out of the country.

But Bandoum couldn’t escape his past. In Paris, he was notorious in the Chadian expat community as a former torturer, and he found himself struggling to cope with persistent accusations and threats.

Finally, in late 2001 or early 2002, Bandoum met a well-known Chadian human rights figure, Dobian Assingar, who had become a close colleague of Reed Brody and who regularly passed through Paris as part of his involvement with the Habré case. “I’ve been watching you, I’ve been following you, I know what you’ve been doing with respect with the case,” Bandoum told him. “I have participated in the crimes you’re talking about.”

Bandoum invited Assingar to his house. Assingar was scared, warned by colleagues not to go, but ultimately, he couldn’t resist. “This was our one chance,” he told me. When he arrived, Bandoum cooked for him. Over many hours and many more drinks, Bandoum opened up and agreed to give testimony in the case. And in an interview in Paris, he told me he is willing to provide full and detailed testimony about his own complicity in Habré’s crimes if Brody’s team can get the case to trial.

In July 2008, Bandoum met with Brody and other members of the legal team in the Human Rights Watch office in Paris for a total of 15 hours*, providing context for the thousands of documents Brody had found at the DDS headquarters. He then gave an exhaustive deposition, meticulously laying out direct links between the dictator and the DDS. “This case doesn’t have one ‘smoking gun’ document from Habré that says, ‘Go kill these people, etc.,’” Brody explained. “Bandoum is the one who explains how DDS hand-delivered docs to Habré; how Habré kept a close watch.… Hundreds of documents say, ‘To President Habré,’ and Bandjim Bandoum can say, ‘The documents were hand-delivered by the head of the DDS, and we know he read them.’”

Part 7

2013: Vindication at Last

On the morning of June 30, 2013, Senegalese police arrested Hissène Habré at his home in Dakar, where he had lived in gilded exile for 22 years. He was charged with crimes against humanity, torture, and war crimes. He is confined in a refurbished Dakar jail awaiting trial before the Extraordinary African Chambers, a special body within the courts of Senegal created for the express purpose of trying Hissène Habré -- a trial expected to begin in 2015.1 “The wheels of justice are turning,” said Brody on the day of the arrest. “After 22 years, Habré’s victims can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Habré is escorted by military officers after being heard by a judge on July 2, 2013, in Dakar.

Through his lawyers, Habré refused multiple requests to be interviewed for this article, but one of his Paris-based attorneys, François Serres, told me that his client denies all charges. The Obama administration has come out publicly in support of the trial, a development Serres flagged as the height of hypocrisy. In a July 4, 2012, letter to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he condemned the U.S. position, as reflected in a State Department report submitted to Congress the previous month2. “[The document] does not offer a fair and impartial view of this case,” Serres wrote. “This is probably the result of the misinformation conveyed by a large number of organisations, among which Human Rights Watch, in particular through its spokesman, who, for a decade, has been leading a heinous campaign, against Hissein Habré, in spite of court decisions, in violation of basic human rights principles and with the complicity of the current Chadian authorities.”

It was the Belgians who had ultimately helped Brody turn the slow wheels of international justice -- but even their progress had been fitful, despite the 2000 indictment. In 2003, Belgium’s law of universal jurisdiction came under fierce attack, from the United States in particular, after former President George H.W. Bush, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney were charged in connection with the 1991 bombing of a civilian shelter in Baghdad during the Gulf War. Under American threats, Belgium repealed the law in August 2003, but the case against Habré was grandfathered in and allowed to continue.

In 2009, after Senegal had repeatedly failed to act on an extradition request for Habré, Belgium went to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) -- the principal judicial body of the United Nations, often simply called the World Court -- to compel Dakar’s compliance. “Going to the ICJ is the juridical equivalent of war,” Brody said. Finally, in March 2012, the court convened for hearings on the merits of the case. Its decision would be binding upon Senegal.

Human Rights Watch flew Souleymane Guengueng in from New York. The legal dossier Brody and his team provided Belgian attorneys in support of their case included Guengueng’s original victims’ files, the DDS archives, and a string of legal opinions they had accumulated since they first filed charges against Habré in Dakar. “To have Habré’s alleged crimes read out in detail and basically taken as a given by both sides and the highest court in the U.N. was already a measure of victory,” said Brody, who worked furiously with a team of interns during the hearings, preparing legal briefs to help the Belgian lawyers rebut each of Senegal’s arguments.

Days after the hearings, there was an exciting development. Senegal elected a new president: Macky Sall, a young, energetic politician. Shortly after taking office, Sall announced that he was committed to the rule of law and that Habré would be tried in Senegal. “We didn’t want to go back and forth beating around the bush for years like the last administration,” Senegal’s then-justice minister (now prime minister), Aminata “Mimi the Storm” Touré, told me. “We have to walk the talk.”

Then, on July 20, 2012, the ICJ announced a unanimous decision ordering Senegal to “without further delay, submit the case of Mr. Hissène Habré to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution, if it does not extradite him.”3 Guengueng felt vindicated: “Today, my friends who were tortured, the people I saw die in jail, those who never gave up hope, are one step closer to achieving justice.”

Brody traveled to Chad in December to be on hand while four investigating judges from Senegal visited N’Djamena to take testimony, a crucial early step in the proceedings. Chadian victims, believing for the first time that Habré will actually be tried, are coming out of the woodwork. The judges have conducted more than 1,000 interviews, visited mass graves, and inspected a farm where Habré’s forces are accused of massacring hundreds of rebel soldiers attempting to surrender. The judges have conducted more than 1,000 interviews, visited mass graves4 accompanied by forensic archaeologists, and inspected a farm in southern Chad where Habré’s forces are accused of massacring hundreds of rebel soldiers as they attempted to surrender.

“This has the potential to be the transformative moment for African justice,” Brody told me. “A televised trial in an African court in which African victims are bringing an African dictator to justice has the potential to capture people’s imagination.… People who were inspired by the use of the law to arrest Pinochet can be even more inspired when they see Souleymane Guengueng testifying -- when they see Jacqueline Moudeina, still with shrapnel in her leg, cross-examining Hissène Habré.”

U.S. President Barack Obama has praised Senegal’s efforts to prosecute Habré, and the United States has indicated it will contribute $1 million to help pay for the trial. Of course, the Obama administration itself has supported repressive governments when they have been perceived to serve U.S. interests. And, in 2011, it finished the job President Reagan had started three decades ago, helping Libyan rebels oust Qaddafi. A cynic could interpret Washington’s newfound support for justice in Chad as little more than an attempt to whitewash its years of support for a torturer -- an effort that began on Nov. 30, 1990, when Habré fled into exile.

That evening, with N’Djamena on the verge of falling to Idriss Déby’s rebels, Col. David Foulds rushed from the American Embassy to the CIA training facility outside the capital. The U.S. defense attaché had to quickly evacuate the “fifth column” of some 200 Libyan expats the CIA had secretly armed before they clashed with Déby’s Qaddafi-backed forces. At the camp, he took their weapons, loaded the men into trucks, and drove them to the airport, packing them so tightly in the waiting American C-141s that they flew out of the country standing body to body. As for the Stingers the United States had given Habré, no one would speak about them for attribution. They were ultimately found hidden beneath the staircase of the Chadian Ministry of Defense, all accounted for.

Hissène Habré had left his country in tatters -- physically and psychologically. Tens of thousands of Chadians were killed by his regime, directly or in conflict with the Libyans. Among the victims I interviewed, an opposition politician named Gali Gatta N’Gothe explained most vividly how the legacy of Habré’s terror endures. A former advisor to the dictator, Gali resigned in protest in 1988 and was arrested in 1990 for organizing a leaflet campaign calling for an end to repression and the dissolution of the DDS. He was tortured severely, imprisoned in the Piscine and the Gendarmerie (a jail where Guengueng also spent a year). At one point, Gali was interrogated by the head of the DDS, who was receiving instructions on his walkie-talkie throughout -- from Habré. Gali is a big, easygoing man with curly hair and a warm laugh, but tears came to his eyes as we talked. “Even right now, as we’re talking, I’m afraid. I’m controlled.… It’s very dangerous. Habré’s system completely divided Chadian society, collapsed Chadian society. Even our lives now are the consequence of Hissène Habré’s reign.”

Charlie Duelfer sees Chad as a cautionary tale. “Did this help rein in [Qaddafi] a bit? I don’t know,” he mused recently over Irish food at a pub near the United Nations. “If we had done nothing, would it have made any difference?” Hissène Habré killed some 10,000 Libyan soldiers, but Qaddafi remained in power for another two decades. “Any of these defense initiatives looked at 10 years later, you end up asking, ‘Was it worth it?’ Look at Vietnam. Look at Iraq 10 years later. Bin Laden? The ‘war on terror’? We spent a trillion dollars over 10 years to put a 50-cent round in one guy’s head? Everybody thinks that’s a huge success. I don’t know.”♦


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发表于 2014-2-22 21:21 | 显示全部楼层
又是个大部头的, 楼主辛苦了!
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发表于 2014-2-23 11:48 | 显示全部楼层
好长长长长、、、
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发表于 2014-2-25 12:47 | 显示全部楼层
这个报告好长好长啊。
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