The former President of Chad, Hissene Habre, has been charged in Senegal with acts of torture and barbarity.

It is the first time a former African head of state has been indicted in another country for human rights offences.

The human rights campaigners who brought the case said they had been inspired by the legal battle in the United Kingdom for the extradition of the former Chilean military leader, Augusto Pinochet to face torture charges in Spain.

Mr Habre, who has lived in exile in Senegal since being overthrown in 1990, is accused of killing and torturing thousands of political opponents.

The former Chadian leader has been placed under house arrest in his villa in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

Mr Habre denies the accusations against him, and believes they are part of "political machinations", his lawyer said.

Western support

There are striking parallels with the Pinochet case: the charges against Hissen Habre are being heard in a foreign court and, like General Pinochet, Habre enjoyed the support of the West during his notoriously brutal years in office.

This Western support was mainly because the United States saw Habre as a political counter-balance against Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, Chad's northern neighbour.