Rape and the President

Abstract

Khadidja Hassan Zidane told a stunned Senegalese courtroom that Chad’s former president, Hissène Habré had raped her on four separate occasions. But judges ruled Zidane’s testimony came too late, and Habré was acquitted of this charge. While Habré’s convictions for torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity still stand, Kim Thuy Seelinger, the director of the Sexual Violence Program at the Human Rights Center at University of California, Berkeley, writes that Zidane’s case raises an important question: How can courts balance survivors’ readiness to disclose with defendants’ right to know the full charges against them?