What Hissene Habre's death in prison says

His western counterparts go scot free

News of former Chadian president Hissene Habre’s death (on August 24) made me think of crime and punishment and how it seems to affect some heads of state more than others.

Leaders in African, Middle Eastern and Balkan states often get their just desserts.

There was Habre, of course, 79 and serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity committed during his time in office in the 1980s. His 2016 conviction in Senegal made Habre the first former head of state to be punished in this way by another country’s courts.

It’s really rather remarkable that Habre should have been put on trial and convicted except that this sequence seems to be increasingly common for African, Middle Eastern and Balkan leaders.

Remember the many photos of African and Middle Eastern leaders sitting in a cage in a courtroom? They include Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who was convicted in 2012 of complicity in the deaths of Arab Spring protestors. And Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, who was convicted in 2019 of corruption. [In ea…