Four sentenced to death in Chad to be executed Thursday: rights group

LIBREVILLE, Nov 5 (AFP) — Four people sentenced to death last month for the murder of a Sudanese oil businessman will be executed in Chad on Thursday, the Chad Human Rights League told AFP.

“The families were informed that they were going to be executed Thursday,” the organizations’ vice president, Jean-Bernard Padare, said in a telephone interview from the Chadian capital, Ndjamena.

Chad’s interior ministry declined to confirm or deny the executions were due to take place Thursday.

The four men were sentenced to death in Chad’s criminal court on October 25 for the murder of Sudanese businessman Acheik Ibni Oumar Idriss Youssouf, who was shot dead in Ndjamena exactly one month before.

Chadian President Idriss Deby rejected Monday an appeal to commute the death sentences submitted by by the four, Padare said.

“We don’t understand how they can contemplate executing them while all the avenues of appeal have not been exhausted,” Padare said, adding that appeals had been filed with the Supreme Court.

“Not a single autopsy was performed on the cadaver,” said the Collective of Human Rights Associations in a statement released Wednesday, denouncing the legal proceedings of the four sentenced to death.

The victim was the head of the recently-created Chad Petroleum company, which is in charge of building a small refinery near the Sedigui oil field near Lake Chad that will provide petroleum products for domestic consumption.

The Sedigui project was originally entrusted to another Sudanese company, Concorp International Limited, but its contract was canceled because of an embezzlement scandal.

The death penalty remains on the books in Chad, but according to information available to AFP it has not been carried out since 1991.