Idriss Déby's rebel movement, the Patriotic Salvation Movement, closed in on Chad's capital N'Djamena in mid-October 1990, forcing President Hissène Habré to flee days later into exile in Senegal. Habré's eight-year rule had been marked by systematic torture and killings that a truth commission later estimated claimed 40,000 lives, and Déby would go on to rule Chad for the next three decades.
By mid-October 1990, Hissène Habré's grip on Chad was crumbling fast. His former army chief of staff, Idriss Déby, who had fled into exile in Sudan after a falling-out, returned at the head of a rebel column backed by Libyan and Sudanese support, sweeping across eastern Chad with little effective resistance.
Habré's secret police, the DDS, had spent years running a network of detention centers where dissidents were tortured and killed; a truth commission established after his fall estimated as many as 40,000 people died under his rule. He was eventually convicted of crimes against humanity in 2016 by a special court in Senegal — a landmark case as the first time an African Union-backed tribunal convicted a former head of state for atrocities.
Déby, ironically, would go on to rule Chad even longer than Habré, staying in power until he was killed visiting troops fighting rebels in April 2021, having survived numerous coup attempts across three decades in office.
Key people: Idriss Déby, Hissène Habré