Mahamat Nouri

On 17 June 2019 he was arrested by the French police, as were Abakar Tollimi and Abderaman Abdelkerim (brother of Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim), on suspicion of crimes against humanity in which he was implicated between 2005 and 2010 in Chad and Sudan. following a procedure opened in 2017.

On January 28, 2008, in an attack said to be planned by the Sudanese Defence Minister Abd-er-Rahim Mohamed Hussein, Nouri and his allies left Sudan with 2,000 troops mounted on 250 pick-ups. On February 1 they successfully routed at Massaguet a governative counteroffensive, investing on the following day the Chadian capital. After two days of intense fighting that left hundreds of dead the rebels retreated on February 3 calling for reinforcements. These were intercepted and defeated by Déby's Sudanese ally, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), thus forcing the rebels to give up for good and moved to Mongo in central Chad to regroup.

In explaining his political goals to Radio France Internationale in February 2007, Nouri said that the forces that support him "beat themselves for justice and to overthrow the regime in power in Chad as a mean to restore in Chad justice and democracy". Nouri denied he was fighting for personal power, and instead claimed that if victorious "we intend to organise a national forum, during which a short transition will take place ... to reach free and fair elections".

The UFDD has suffered by internal dissensions that have ultimately given birth to the UFDD-Fondamentale led by Abdelwahit About and Acheikh ibn Oumar. This was caused by the expulsion in April 2007 from the movement of the UFDD vice-president ibn Oumar, whose Arab elements have played a key role in the battles that took place in late 2006. But when Acheikh asked for a major space for his men in the movement's organization, he was replaced by Nouri with Adoum Hassab Allah and his Ouaddaian fighters. Thus the UFDD is considered to be dominated by the Toubous, as claimed also by a former cadre of the movement, Habib Dinguess, who has said that Anakaza clan members have taken full control of the movement, in particular those linked to the old Habré regime, first of all Guihini Koreï, once head of the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), Habré's secret police. The UFDD awnsered that Dinguess claims were "ridiculous and shameful" and part of a campaign "to denounce all those that oppose Déby as linked to Habré, or Anakaza or Gorane" and added that Korei was only one of many cadres in the movement.

To put an end to the conflict among the Chadian government and the rebels the first to propose himself as a mediator was in April 2007 the former president Goukouni Oueddei, who said he would contact both Nouri and Timane Erdimi, leader of the Rally of Democratic Forces, an idea that Déby said to agree on. Eventually talk peaces sponsored by the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi began in Tripoli on June 23 between the Chadian government, whose delegation was led by Infrastructure Minister Adoum Younousmi, and a rebel one, which included a delegation formed by Mahamat Nouri for the UFDD, Timane Erdimi for the Gathering of Forces for Change (the former RaFD), Hasssan al-Djineidi for the Chadian National Concord (CNT) and Aboud Mackaye for the UFDD-F. Through these talks a preliminary peace agreement was signed on October 3, which was criticized by part of the rebels as being too vague regarding the terms for disarmament and reintegration of their respective forces into the Chadian military. Further negotiations brought on October 25 to a final peace agreement signed on October 25 in Sirte, at the presence of Déby, Gaddafi and the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. As part of the deal, the rebels and the government have agreed to an immediate ceasefire, a general amnesty and the right for the rebels to join the military and the insurgent groups to become political parties. and the "total respect for the Chadian constitution." While signing the accord, Nouri has moved objections to the government request that the rebels disarm before being reintegrated into the national army.

Nouri led the creation, from a plurality of armed movements, the most powerful of the Chadian rebel groups, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD). He started a series of attacks against government positions in eastern Chad in autumn 2006, causing serious difficulties to Déby. After the ultimate failure of a series of talks held in Libya in 2007, Nouri coalesced with two other rebel groups and launched a direct attack on the Chadian capital in February 2008, but was repelled after days of heavy fighting.

In November the Sudanese government ceased to support the FUC, which signed in December a peace accord with Déby, and supported in its place Nouri's movement, making it the most powerful anti-Déby insurgency. While possibly not strong enough to remove by force the president, Nouri's forces laid siege to key towns in eastern Chad in late 2006, in particular occupying briefly on November 25 Abéché, the main city in eastern Chad. After the fall of Abéché, French sources had warned that the capital N'Djamena could have been attacked in 24 hours; this eventually did not take place, possibly because of Nouri's stated decision to avoid direct attacks on the capital, but to point instead for a war or of attrition, employing hit and run tactics: "our objective so to defeat the enemy troops is to progressively weaken them ... we have inflicted heavy losses on Déby's army, we are now withdrawing ... our final objective remains the fall of N'Djamena, but without haste".

After Habré was ousted by the rebel forces of Idriss Déby in December 1990, Nouri became a close ally of the new President and a pillar of his regime. In the transitional coalition government formed following the 1993 Sovereign National Conference, Nouri became Minister of Health under Prime Minister Fidèle Moungar. In 1995, when Koibla Djimasta was appointed as the last transitional Prime Minister, Nouri was named Minister of the Interior; while holding this post, he also chaired the Commission Nationale Recensement Électoral (CNRE), created in 1995 to organise the voter registration for the first multiparty elections in Chad since independence. Following Déby's victory in the 1996 presidential election, Nouri was moved from his post as Minister of the Interior to that of Minister for Livestock. He kept the latter post for five years; he left it on February 24, 2001, when he was appointed as Minister of National Defence in the government chaired by Nagoum Yamassoum. He left his post and the government three years later, during a cabinet reshuffle that took place on February 2, 2004. Nouri's entourage gave ill health as the reason for his departure. He was successively posted for two years to Saudi Arabia as an ambassador, until he left his position on May 6, 2006.

Following Habré's downfall in 1990, Nouri passed his allegiance to his successor, Idriss Déby, under whom he rose once again to great prominence, remaining in the cabinet without interruption from 1995 to 2004. After that he was sent as Chad's ambassador to Saudi Arabia: while in that country he broke with Déby in 2006, joining armed opposition against him.

One of Habré's most seasoned and flexible commanders, he participated to the final phase of the Chadian-Libyan conflict as commander of the Chadian forces during the battle of Aouzou in August 1987.

When Habré rebelled against Goukouni in 1980, Nouri was once again by his side, and for this he was tried by a special criminal court and on June 13, 1981, sentenced together with Idriss Miskine to hard labour for life, while the leader of the FAN, Habré, was sentenced to death. This did not deter Nouri from returning to prominence when Habré conquered the capital N'Djamena in 1982: as Habré's right hand, Nouri became the new regime's number 2. In 1984 he was made Commissioner for External Affairs in the Executive Bureau of the country's only legal party, the National Union for Independence and Revolution (UNIR), and was to eventually obtain the chairmanship of the party.

Nouri received a formal education and became a postal official. He successively entered in the ranks of the FROLINAT, the rebel movement that was waging a civil war against the central government. When the Second Army of the FROLINAT divided itself in 1977 among the supporters of Habré and those of Goukouni Oueddei, Nouri sided with Habré and was one of the very few men to be by Habré's side for all the length of the latter's political career. As number 2 of Habré's rebel Armed Forces of the North (FAN) with the rank of inspector-general, he was given the leadership of the FAN delegation that negotiated the Khartoum peace accord with the Chadian government in 1978. During the coalition government created from this accord between President Félix Malloum and the former rebel leader Habré, now nominated Prime Minister, Nouri held the decisive post of Minister of the Interior, although he was well known for his low opinion of Southern Chadians. After the collapse of the coalition in February 1979, Nouri became Minister of Transport in the first Goukouni government that followed.

General Mahamat Nouri (born 1947) is a Chadian insurgent leader who currently commands the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD). A Muslim from northern Chad, he began his career as a FROLINAT rebel, and when the group's Second Army split in 1976 he sided with his kinsman Hissène Habré. As Habré's associate he obtained in 1978 the first of the many ministerial positions in his career, becoming Interior Minister in a coalition government. When Habré reached the presidency in 1982, Nouri was by his side and played an important role in the regime.

An ethnic Daza clan of the Anakaza subclan like the former President Hissène Habré, Nouri was born in 1947 in Faya-Largeau in northern Chad.