TUNIS, Tunisia
As the African continent continues its long and winding journey to democracy, Anadolu Agency looks back at leaders who have fallen from power and been forced to appear in front of local and international courts.
1 - Hissene Habre
Ruling Chad with an iron fist between 1982 and 1990, Habre was toppled by current President Idriss Deby Itno.
Since his overthrow, he has lived in exile in Senegal.
After 19 months of investigation, Senegalese authorities in collaboration with the African Union indicted Habre in July 2013 for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and placed him under provisional detention.
2 - Moussa Dadis Camara
Moussa Dadis Camara, the former head of the military junta in Guinea, is another African head of state who went from exiled to accused.
Guinean judicial authorities indicted the former coup leader on July 8 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the country that offered him exile in 2010, shortly after his removal from power in January the same year.
Camara will face charges of "complicity in extrajudicial killings, rape and enforced disappearances" related to suppression of opponents in 2009.
At least 157 people were killed in the Guinean Massacre and hundreds injured, according to the UN, which also alleged that dozens of women had been raped and that hundreds of people had disappeared. The International Criminal Court is closely following the trial.
3 - Laurent Gbagbo
Former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo has been held by the ICC since November 2011, shortly after the end of the post-electoral crisis rocked the Ivory Coast during 2010-2011.
His trial in The Hague will begin on Nov. 10, this year. He will face four counts of crimes against humanity that took place during the unrest, in which the UN says 3,000 died.
4 - Bokassa I
Ousted in a 1979 coup, Central African Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa voluntarily surrendered to his country’s authorities in 1986 after being exiled in France and the Ivory Coast. He was tried for treason, murder and embezzlement.
Sentenced to death, his sentence was first commuted to life imprisonment, later to 10 years in prison and he was finally pardoned by CAR President Andre Kolingba in 1993.
5 - Hosni Mubarak
Longtime autocrat Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to three years in prison in 2015 for embezzling $10 million.
He has effectively served the sentence as he has been in custody since he was toppled in the January 2011 revolution. His other trials are still ongoing.
6 - Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Ousted in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings on Jan. 14, 2011, the former Tunisian president has an international warrant for his arrest.
Living in exile in Saudi Arabia, Ben Ali is accused of conspiring against the security of the state, abusing power and embezzlement. He was handed down life sentences in absentia by military courts in 2012 and 2013.
7 - Marc Ravalomanana
The former Madagascan president was sentenced in absentia in August 2010 to hard labor for life over the deaths of about thirty protesters during the country’s 2009 political crisis.
Ravalomanana was arrested in October 2014 and placed under house arrest, after spending five years in exile in South Africa.
