Former Chadian president Hissène Habré, who was serving a life term in Senegal for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has died, Senegalese Justice Minister Malick Sall said Tuesday. He was 79.

“Habré is in his Lord’s hands,” Sall told the television channel TFM, while local media said he had died of Covid-19.

Habré’s eight-year rule of Chad, an impoverished, landlocked country in central Africa, from 1982 to 1990 was marked by a brutal crackdown on dissent in which more than 40,000 people died, according to investigators.

After his overthrow in Chad, Habré fled to Senegal and for more than 20 years lived freely in an upmarket Dakar suburb with his wife and children.

Dubbed “Africa’s Pinochet”, he was finally arrested in 2013 and tried by a special tribunal set up by the African Union under a deal with Senegal.

He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Dakar in 2016.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)