Former rebel leader and former Intelligence Chief (RG), Mahamat Abdoul Kadre Oumar, known as Baba Ladde, has been held at the RG since December 26, 2022.
He is one of the Chadian rebel leaders who have had the most trouble with the law. And obviously, the prison is still calling for him. Since December 26, 2022, the former rebel leader and former Director General of Intelligence and Investigation (DGRI), Mahamat Abdoul Kadre Oumar, better known by his nickname Baba Ladde (father of the bush in the Fulbe language, a nickname given to him by his grandmother), has been cross-examined and held in the premises of the Chadian General Intelligence. Officially, no reason for his arrest was given.
Baba Ladde was born in the 1970s in Gounou-Gaya, in the eastern Mayo-Kebbi region, a province located 220 km south of Ndjamena, the Chadian capital. After his primary and junior high school education (6th to 3rd grade) in Gounou-Gaya, Baba Ladde entered the commercial technical high school in 1990.
In 1995, while in his final year of high school, he passed the entrance exam to the gendarmerie. Within this corps, he worked as secretary to the commander of the training center and then as archivist of the gendarmerie.
Eight years in prison
Chief Marshal of Logis, he became captain in 1998. Following a conflict in the South and in the Chari Baguirmi between Fulani herders and local authorities, Baba Ladde created, with a group of young people from his community, the Popular Front for Recovery (FPR) inspired by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Betrayed by one of the members, Baba Ladde was arrested on October 15, 1998 with three other of his comrades. Released in September 1999, “the father of the bush” found refuge in Cameroon and began a career as a rebel.
With his troop, he wandered between Sudan, the Central African Republic and Chad. Several times he held talks with Chadian authorities to lay down his arms. Thanks to a peace agreement, Baba Ladde was appointed Advisor in charge of a mission at the Prime Minister’s Office in 2013 and then Prefect of Maro, a border town with the Central African Republic in 2014. After being removed from the latter position, he was narrowly missed being arrested by Chadian forces when the population opposed his replacement as head of the department.
Reported in the Central African Republic, he was arrested by UN forces and then extradited to Chad where he was sentenced to eight years in prison for murder, criminal association, and illegal possession of firearms. He is serving his sentence to be released in 2020.
Alongside Marshal Idriss Deby Itno
In 2021, Baba Ladde filed his candidacy for the supreme magistracy on behalf of his armed movement, the RPF. But the Supreme Court rejected him for not recognizing his movement as a political party. He went into hiding, only to reappear publicly in March 2021 alongside the late President Idriss Deby Itno in a presidential campaign in Bongor in the eastern Mayo-Kebbi region. This was a sign of reconciliation with the man who had long treated him as a road cutter, a highwayman, and did not recognize his rebel status.
When President Idriss Deby Itno died in April 2021 in an army counter-offensive against the rebels of the ‘Front pour l’Alternance et la Concorde au Tchad’ (FACT), Baba Ladde found favor with the new master of Ndjamena, General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno. In October 2021, he appointed him Director General of Intelligence and Investigation (DGRI), the all-powerful espionage and counter-espionage agency, a strategic position.
Five months later he was removed and appointed Secretary General of the Ministry of Public Security and Immigration. He held this position until the formation of the new transitional government in October 2022.
Since then, the ex-maquisard has kept a low profile until December 20, 2022, when he announced on Facebook that he had been invited by a Fulani pastor to attend a Christmas celebration in the Dourbali department in the Chari-Baguirmi. And it was on his return from that town on December 26 that he was questioned by DGRI agents in the evening. “Baba Laddé is a mystery. It’s hard to figure him out. He is a discreet man. You only hear about him when he has problems, and he always has problems,” says Moussa Guedmbaye, a Chadian journalist.
CA/te/fss/abj/APA