A/HRC/4/33 page 13 Hissène Habré resided since he was overthrown by Idris Deby in 1990. Only one week later, the Senegalese judge Demby Kandji indicted the former dictator as an accomplice to torture and placed him under house arrest. In July 2000, the Appeals Court quashed the indictment, and in March 2001, the Court of Cassation confirmed that Senegalese courts were not competent to establish universal jurisdiction. In April 2001, seven victims of torture lodged a complaint against Senegal before the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT), and in the meantime legal proceedings were also initiated by victims in Belgium. After a long delay caused by developments in Belgium which led to an amendment of its liberal universal jurisdiction provisions, an international arrest warrant was finally issued by the Belgian judge Daniel Fransen in September 2005, and Belgium made an extradition request to Senegal. In November 2005, Hissène Habré was arrested by Senegalese authorities, but the Court of Appeal again released him, this time on the ground that it had no jurisdiction to rule on the extradition request. Instead, the Government of Senegal placed him at the disposal of the President of the African Union. In January 2006, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union decided to set up a Committee of Eminent African Jurists to consider all aspects and implications of the Habré case and to submit a report to its next session in June 2006. Before the Committee of Eminent African Jurists prepared its report, CAT, which had been requested by the parties to delay its proceedings because of the judicial proceedings pending in Belgium, on 17 May 2006 issued a landmark decision on the complaint submitted by seven Chadian torture victims more than five years before. It found a violation of article 5 (2) on the ground that the Senegalese authorities had failed to take the legislative measures necessary to establish the legal possibility for Senegalese courts to exercise universal jurisdiction.8 The Committee also ruled that Senegal had violated its obligations to prosecute or extradite (aut dedere aut iudicare) in accordance with article 7.9 In addition, by refusing to comply with the extradition request from Belgium, “the State party has again failed to perform its obligations under article 7 of the Convention”.10 Most importantly, the Committee noted that “the obligation to prosecute the alleged perpetrator of acts of torture does not depend on the prior existence of a request for his extradition”.11 Therefore, “the State party was obliged to prosecute Hissène Habré for alleged acts of torture unless it could show that there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute, at least at the time when the complainants submitted their complaint in January 2000”.12 44. Indeed, the only alternative to prosecuting an alleged torturer present in its territory is for a State to extradite him or her, in accordance with the principle aut dedere aut iudicare provided for in article 7, to the State where the act of torture allegedly was committed (the territorial 8 Op. cit. at note 7, paras. 9.5 and 9.6. 9 Ibid., paras. 9.7-9.9. 10 Ibid., para. 9.11. 11 Ibid., para. 9.7. 12 Ibid., para. 9.8.