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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:29 am
Time: 2:29 am
Results for deaths in custody (chad)
1 results foundAuthor: Silva, Romesh Title: State Coordinated Violence in Chad under Hissene Habre: A Statistical Analysis of Reported Prison Mortality in Chad's DDS Prisons and Command Responsibility of Hissene Habre, 1982-1990 Summary: This report documents the death of prisoners inside Chad's Direction de la Documentation et de la Securite (DDS) prisons between 1982 and 1990, and the extent to which former Chadian president Hissene Habre and senior officials within his government are responsible for human rights violations committed by the DDS. The report presents evidence which is consistent with the hypothesis that the policies and practices of Hissene Habre and senior DDS officials, whom Habre appointed, contributed to deaths in custody on a level substantially higher than the adult mortality rate of Chad at the time. The analysis tests the hypotheses that Habre had a superior-subordinate relationship with senior DDS officials and had knowledge of their actions, which resulted in substantial deaths in custody. The available evidence also suggests Habre's "failure to act" in his lack of action to prevent these deaths or reprimand his subordinates who were charged with day-to-day oversight of DDS prisons. The conclusions of the report are developed by analyzing official records of the DDS and other government departments, which were recovered by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 2001 from the abandoned DDS headquarters in N'Djamena, the Chadian capital. Hissene Habre assumed the presidency of Chad in 1982 and immediately set up the DDS. From the documents recovered from the DDS and coded by HRW to extract data from the narrative, we show that while the DDS was originally part of the Ministry of Interior, within 6 months of its founding Habre re-organized it to operate as a special unit outside of the Ministry of Interior with direct reporting lines to Habre himself. From analysis of routine DDS records, including Situation Journals and death certificates which were recovered and coded, we found that the observed mortality rate within the DDS prisons varied from 30 per 1,000 to 87 per 1,000 prisoners. This rate is substantially higher than the crude death rate of Chad in the 1970's and 1990's which was less than 25 per 1,000, see section 5.2 The crude death rate for the whole of Chad, unlike DDS prison mortality, is mainly driven by high infant mortality. A total of 12,321 individual victims were mentioned in the recovered and coded documents, including documentation of 1,208 deaths in detention. From these documents, we verified that President Habre received 1,265 direct communications about 898 DDS prison detainees. This is direct evidence that Habre's subordinates within the DDS communicated detailed information about the ongoing practices and events within the DDS prisons. The recovered and coded DDS documents provide evidence that the DDS operations were carried out across the di erent provinces of Chad, and that the senior leadership of the DDS was informed about these operations in different regions. Acts of arbitrary arrest, detention and torture are mentioned in the documents. It is not possible to determine how representative these recovered and coded documents are of all DDS documents ever written. Yet, these documents provide evidence of the type of acts which were carried out by the DDS and that the senior leadership, including President Habre, were continuously informed about such acts. Furthermore, among the recovered documents is an Oath of Allegiance in which officials, upon their recruitment into the DDS, swear "their honor, faithfulness and dedication to the President of the Republic..." and solemnly "promise to never betray and keep secret all the activities of the DDS." This suggest how closely President Habre was involved with the operations of the DDS and its oversight. To further assess command responsibility of the DDS, we analyzed the document flow into and out of the DDS. Of the 2,7331 official documents recovered from the former DDS headquarters and coded by HRW, 384 were direct communications from the DDS to President Habre. The bulk of the remaining documents (for which authorship and recipients were readily identifiable) were internal communications within the DDS. These internal documents were usually from the BSIR (Chad's Special Rapid Action Brigade) to the DDS leadership, or from the different service units to the Director of the DDS. Our analysis of document flow shows that -- The Director of the DDS (who was appointed directly by President Habre) received regular written communications from the service units of the DDS. -- President Habre continuously received ad-hoc communications from the DDS Director and its service units about its policies and practices. -- President Habre was directly informed about the status of 898 prisoners, including 38 deaths in detention. -- There is a notable difference between written communication from the Ministry of Interior (MoI) to President Habre and the communication from the DDS to President Habre. This suggests that the DDS was not a regular line ministry (like the MoI), but rather operated like a special unit of the office of the President. This suggests a clear superior-subordinate relationship between President Habre and the DDS. -- President Habre and the Director of the DDS had direct authority for the promotions and transfers of the senior DDS leadership. Our analysis shows evidence that -- Large-scale human rights violations were carried out inside the DDS prisons. -- Both President Habre and the Director of the DDS were well informed of DDS operations and prisoner deaths. -- There was a superior-subordinate relationship between President Habre and the DDS senior leadership. There are several limitations of our findings. Foremost is the fact that we are unable to estimate the total magnitude of violations carried out by DDS officials and the full extent of President Habre's knowledge of these acts. However, our analysis of the DDS's own records does show evidence that large-scale human rights violations were committed by the DDS, that the DDS was under President Habre's command, and that Habre was continuously informed about DDS operations. Also, although we identified some instances of officials being relieved of their duties by their superiors, it is not clear on what basis such actions were taken. Details: Palo Alto, CA: Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Human Rights Program, Benetech, 2010. 73p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 11, 2011 at: http://www.hrdag.org/about/downloads/State-Violence-in-Chad.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Chad URL: http://www.hrdag.org/about/downloads/State-Violence-in-Chad.pdf Shelf Number: 121718 Keywords: Deaths in Custody (Chad)Human RightsPrisonersPrisons |