Mahamat Nouri

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.

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.

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.

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. Provided by Wikipedia