As Chad's former ruler Hissene Habre awaits a ruling on an extradition request from Belgium to face charges of crimes against humanity, the African Union is being urged to examine the case.
The international arrest warrant issued by Belgium in September accuses Habre, 63, of mass murder and torture carried out by his political police.
The alleged crimes were committed when Habre was in power from 1982 to 1990. He took power after a long military campaign and was in turn overthrown in a coup d'etat in 1990 by current Chad president Idriss Deby.
He then sought exile in Senegal and was arrested there on Tuesday. Habre is expected to stay in custody while a
Senegalese judge decides on the validity of the Belgian extradition case. The judge has up to eight days to make the ruling.
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A Chadian government inquiry has accused Habre's government of 40,000 political killings and 200,000 cases of torture.
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A Brussels magistrate issued the arrest warrant on 19 September under Belgium's universal jurisdiction law, dubbed by some as the nation's 'genocide law'. It allows Belgian judges to prosecute human rights violations no matter where they were committed.
