N'DJAMENA, CHAD: "Since when has justice come all the way to Chad?" a former political prisoner asked as a group of torture victims discussed the idea of prosecuting the country's exiled ex-dictator Hissène Habré. Habré, who brutalized this impoverished country from 1982 to 1990, was then living safely in a seaside villa across the continent in Senegal, enjoying the $14 million he reportedly looted from the treasury on his way into exile.

But justice did come to Chad. It came in the form of a young Belgian judge, a Brussels prosecutor, four strapping police officers, and a court clerk, who arrived in this dusty capital to investigate charges filed against Habré in a Belgian court pursuant to that country's long-arm anti-atrocity law, which permits prosecution of the worst human rights crimes no matter where they took place.

When news of the group's arrival was announced on Chad's radio, former victims began to line up at the courthouse to tell their stories. Habré, once backed by the United States and France as a bulwark against Libya's Moammar Quadafi, allegedly killed tens of thousands of real and suspected opponents before he was deposed by his former army chief. Many of Habré's most brutal henchmen still occupy key security posts in the new administration, however, and coming forward remains a risky business. The judge's visit - and the Chad government's full cooperation - seemed to give the victims courage, however.

The judge and his team visited the five N'Djamena jails, including one in the presidential compound, where Habré's American-trained political police systematically tortured prisoners. Ismael Hachim, president of the victims' association, described how he was subjected to the "arbatachar," a common form of torture in which a victim's four limbs were tied tightly behind his back until blood circulation stopped and paralysis resulted.

Souleymane Abdoulaye showed the judge the sweltering underground cell where, as a boy of fourteen, he was crowded in with 72 other prisoners, only eleven of whom survived the near-starvation regimen. Those left alive rested their heads on the cool stomachs of the newly dead for some relief from the heat. Sabadet Totodet took the judge to a clearing on the outskirts of town where he was forced to dig graves for more than 500 fellow prisoners who died in custody.

The judge spent a day examining the newly unearthed files of Habré 's dreaded political police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), including their reports to Habré on massacres of rival ethnic groups and daily lists of prison deaths. The judge also took the testimony of a number of Habré's DDS directors, and even allowed former victims to confront their torturers face to face.

The Belgian judge, everyone here now hopes, will shortly seek Habré's extradition from Senegal, where Habré's victims began their quest two years ago. Inspired by the London arrest of Chile's ex-dictator August Pinochet, they filed complaints in Habrè's place of exile. To everyone's astonishment, a Senegalese judge indicted Habré on charges of crimes against humanity and torture, and placed him under house arrest.

But Senegal's highest court later ruled that Habré could not be tried for crimes allegedly committed in Chad because Senegal did not have a long-arm law like Belgium's. Responding to a plea by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade announced that he would hold Habré pending his extradition to a country where he could get a fair trial.

No one yet thinks that Chad is that country. Indeed, after a group of victims, emboldened by Habré's arrest in Senegal, filed criminal complaints in Chad last year against a number of alleged Habré -era torturers, the office of the prosecutor handling the file was ransacked and the victims' lawyer, Jacqueline Moudeïna, was badly injured when a police squad commanded by an ex-DDS defendant threw a grenade at her.

Belgium thus looks like the only place where Habré's victims may get their day in court. Ironically, the judge's visit comes as Belgium's anti-atrocity law is under legal and political attack. Last year, in a widely acclaimed trial, four Rwandans were convicted by a Belgian jury of involvement in the 1994 genocide in their country. Since then, however, Belgian politicians have grumbled as cases have piled up against leaders such as Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro.

In February, after the Democratic Republic of Congo challenged an arrest warrant against its foreign minister, the International Court of Justice said Belgium had gone too far by not respecting the immunity of sitting office holders. The Habré case poses no such problems, because Habré is no longer in office and because Chad, where the crimes were committed, and Senegal, where Habré resides, are both ready to see him tried in Belgium. Rather, the case shows that long-arm laws like Belgium's, properly applied, can be an important tool to curtail the impunity of the perpetrators of atrocities as well as provide a forum for their victims.