"Given the evidence against him, there are grounds for finding Hissene Habre guilty of the crimes of torture, crimes against humanity and war crimes," said special prosecutor Mbacke Fall after a lengthy closing argument.
Habre, 73, was president of the semi-desert central African country from 1982-1990.
He went on trial last July in a special court, the Extraordinary African Chambers, established in Dakar by the African Union under an agreement with Senegal
It marked the first time a court in an African country has called to account a despot from another African nation.
Fall today said the chain led to the top.
"The apparatus of repression began to operate under the direction of Hissene Habre," Fall said.
The country's political police, the DDS, was "directly subordinate to the presidency," he said.
"Hissene Habre set up his own prisons, which are quite unconnected from the official system of incarceration. It was in these dying rooms that violations of human rights were the most overwhelming," said Fall, describing sites that were "concentration (camps), not detention centres."
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