Fatima Mando was arrested at work in Ndjamena in 1983 with three other women by paramilitary gendarmes who accused them of taking part in a pro-rebellion demonstration. She was among the victims of Habre's iron-fisted rule who told their stories at the weekend.

"To make us talk, make us confess, there were beatings, they hit us hard," Mando said. "They forced us to undress. I said, 'I won't undress'. But they tore my clothes off ... fortunately, we were only there for 10 days." She thinks she owes her release to the intervention of her superior at work.

"My husband is the only victim among the 40000 (the estimated number of those who died in Habre's prisons, according to a 1992 commission of inquiry) whose body was returned," said Zenaba Galyam, widow of one of Habre's top aides who was arrested in 1983 by two of "his own friends" and "died on April 22, 1984 in the [military] martyrs' camps".

"I was taken in on May 11 1989," said Jean Noyoma Kouvounsouna, who was 28 at the time. He was interrogated for three days.

"I was tied up and water under pressure was poured down my mouth to force me to say that I was an agent of Libya," he said. Chad was at war with the neighbouring Libya of Muammar Gaddafi in the 1980s.

Transferred to the martyrs' camps, Kouvounsouna spent seven months and six weeks inside.

"There were six of us in cells 1.5m by 2m," said Clement Abaifouta. "We were so cramped that, for me to turn around, everybody else had to turn around. After I lay down, I gave up my place to somebody else and he rested for a while, then when I was tired he got up and I took his place."

Abaifouta was arrested on July 12 1985 in Ndjamena and held in various detention centres for almost four years. He was forced to be a grave digger and at one stage was burying between eight and 10 bodies a day.

"We struggled to find out why we were being subjected to such treatment," he said, but no one got an answer.

On August 13 1984, soldiers arrived to pick up the older brother of Pierre Ngolsou, then a schoolboy, and a friend of his brother who had allegedly hidden an opposition figure.

"As of now, we don't know what became of those two people," Ngolsou said.

Antoinette Mandjere was 42 and living in Sarh, in the south, in September 1984 when her younger brother disappeared. His body was found a few days later, left out in the bush.

"They didn't bury the dead, they let the bodies rot," she said.

Villagers helped her to bury him discreetly. She does not know why he was killed. She was taken to the local police chief and beaten.

She was released, thanks to the district administrator. If he had not intervened, "they were going to tie me up to throw me in the Chari" river, she said.

Ginette Ngarbaye was picked up in 1985 in Ndjamena by a man who said he had found her missing aunt - but he took her to the security police. She was greeted by "a large, fat man whose shirt was stained with blood".

Ngarbaye, who was four months pregnant, was accused of having helped political opponents of Habre.

"They tortured me. They put electric wires everywhere and I passed out."

She spent two years in detention centres: "My child took his first steps there."

Suddenly cellphones ring and the faces of the victims light up at the news that Senegal, where Habre took refuge in 1990, had reversed a decision to expel him to Chad, under pressure from the UN. Even his victims believe that Habre will not get a fair trial in his home country.