Senegal is to send former Chadian despot Hissene Habre back to his home country, where he has been sentenced to death in absentia, provoking protests from his lawyer and rights groups.

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Both Senegal and Chad confirmed Friday that Habre, dubbed Africa's Pinochet for atrocities committed under his rule, would be sent back to his country on a private plane after two decades exiled in Senegal.

Habre's lawyer El Hadji Diouf said the move was illegal and amounted to "an expulsion, not an extradition."

"No person can be deported to a country where he will die", said Diouf, who is also a lawmaker.

Fair Trial
Human Rights Watch (HRW) advocate Reed Brody, who has spearheaded the case against Habre, raised fears over his hopes for a fair trial.

"We want justice, not the guillotine," he said. "Habre's victims have been fighting for 20 years to bring him to justice but it's vital that he gets a fair trial. We have always opposed the idea of sending him to Chad. We believe the conditions do not exist for him to have a fair trial."

Brody added that Habre "is already sentenced to death in absentia for unrelated crimes in Chad and we would hope that the government would be willing to send him to Belgium where he could get a fair trial". A Chadian court in 2008 sentenced Habre to death for crimes against humanity.

Political murders
Habre fled to Senegal after being toppled in 1990 by current Chadian President General Idriss Deby Itno.
Amid growing pressure to prosecute him, Senegal recently appealed to the African Union to take him off their hands.

A 1992 truth commission report in Chad said that during his time in power he had presided over up to 40,000 political murders and widepread torture.

African heads of state meeting in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, at the beginning of the month adopted a resolution urging Senegal to either prosecute Habre or extradite him.

Special flight
Senegalese government spokesman Moustapha Guirassy said Senegal "would send Hissene Habre back to his home country on July 11 on a special flight in the presence of a representative of the president of the African Union commission (Jean Ping).

"The African Union gave Senegal a mandate to try Hissene Habre or to extradite him," said Guirassy.
Allioune Tine of Senegalese rights group RADDHO said sending Habre to Chad was like leading him "to the abattoir".

"In Chad, Hissene Habre has no guarantee of a free trial. He will have no protection and there is a good chance someone will take revenge on him and finish him off," he told a private Senegalese radio station.

Protracted proces
Habre was first indicted in Senegal for mass murder and torture in 2000, but Senegal said it had no jurisdiction to try the case. He was later charged by Belgium with crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture.

Senegal rejected a Belgian extradition request and in 2006 the African Union mandated the country to put him on trial, at which point the country changed its penal code to include crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

However Senegal's insistence on full international funding for the proceedings in advance held up the case for years.

The country came under increasing pressure to proceed with the trial after receiving pledges of more than eight million euros (11.4 million dollars) from donors in 2010 to finance it.

Chic suburb
In 2009 Brussels lodged a case in the International Court of Justice in The Hague in a bid to force Senegal to either prosecute the former president or extradite him to Belgium for trial.

At Human Rights Watch, Brody said Senegal had promised the ICJ it would not let Habre leave the country while that case was pending.

In December, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said he wanted to "get rid of" Habre by handing the case back to the African Union.

The former president currently lives in a chic suburb of Senegal's seaside capital.