Haiti on Tuesday filed embezzlement and corruption charges against former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who is accused of torturing thousands of Haitians and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars during his 15-year reign.
Haiti’s top prosecutor brought the charges against Duvalier in a day of high drama surrounding the ailing one-time despot, who stunned Haitians on Sunday when he stepped off an Air France flight at the international airport.
After a hearing that lasted more than five hours, complaints of corruption, misappropriation of public funds and criminal conspiracy stemming were filed. The charges could be dismissed or sustained by a judge who will now investigate whether there’s sufficient evidence to go to trial. The process could take months.
Duvalier, 59, was picked up by police early Tuesday amid a flurry of activity at the posh Karibe Hotel in Petionville, where he has been staying.
Judge Gabriel Ambroise and Haitian attorney Reynold Georges arrived at the hotel about 10:30 a.m., as Haitian police officers were asked to secure the premises. A helicopter buzzed overhead.
Duvalier said nothing as police, guns in hand, escorted him out the back of the building. Scores of journalists trailed the convoy as he was transported to the courthouse.
Duvalier has been mum about his reasons for returning to Haiti, and neither prosecutors nor the minister of justice made public statements about the charges or what comes next.
In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the French government notified the United States about Duvalier’s arrival in Haiti “roughly an hour before” he landed at Port-au-Prince’s international airport.
“We don’t believe at this point Haiti needs any more distractions,” said spokesman P.J. Crowley.
“Our focus right now is to help Haiti through this delicate period, have a new government emerge that is credible enough and legitimate enough and viewed positively in the eyes of the Haitian people so that the country, with international support, including the United States, can move ahead with the ongoing efforts to — to rebuild Haiti.”
Duvalier’s presence and the government’s move add to an already tense political climate, where election officials are deciding which of the top three finishers from November’s disputed presidential elections should advance to a two-person runoff.
During Tuesday’s hearing, hundreds of angry protesters demanded the arrest of President Rene Preval and supporter inside warned that he, too, could find himself facing a similar fate.
“This game will destabilize the country,” said Henry-Robert Sterlin, an ambassador under Duvalier. “We don’t have a Duvalier problem. We have a Preval problem. Mr. Preval should know there will be a warrant against him, too.”
Preval has not publicly commented on Duvalier’s return, but shortly after taking office in 2006, he said that all Haitian citizens are entitled to return home under the Constitution but they should be prepared to face justice.
Still, Haiti remained relatively calm even as hundreds of supporters protested outside the court house, burning tires and chanting. They cheered as the dark SUV he was a passenger in drove him back to the hotel.
Gervais Charles, a high profile lawyer who has represented Duvalier, called the move against Duvalier a “scandal” and the charges “political.”
He said they stem from a 2008 criminal complaint against Duvalier that was lost in the quake. Even then, he said, the statute of limitations had expired.
“We remain at the disposal of the justice system,” said Charles, among several lawyers called to Duvalier’s aide early Tuesday as word spread that the Haitian government was moving to arrest him.
He said authorities had confiscated Duvalier’s expired diplomatic passport, which he used to travel to Haiti from French-controlled Guadeloupe.
“He’s a Haitian citizen who is at home,” Charles said. “The most difficult question to answer is when will he leave his home.”
He might not be allowed to leave anytime soon. Still to come are possible human rights complaints by local Haitians, who say they were tortured and then forced into exile during his regime.
Although details of the specific cases filed Tuesday against Duvalier were not immediately known, they could stem from several active cases, according to the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and the Office of International Lawyers. The two advocacy group cited legal documentation for the following cases:
— A 2009 order from a Switzerland court, which stated that the Haitian government had informed it of criminal proceedings against Duvalier as late as June 2008.
— A 1988 decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida that found Duvalier liable for more than $500 million for misappropriation of public funds for his personal use.
The two groups say the legal documents are supported by an extensive public record of Duvalier’s human rights violations, including the torture and disappearances of political dissidents at the dreaded Fort Dimanche prison and other crimes committed by organizations under his control, including the Haitian army and the Volunteers for National Security, otherwise known as the Tonton Macoutes.
International and local human rights group have demanded rights violation charges be brought against the former dictator within hours of his appearance in Haiti. At least two of his victims told McClatchy Newspapers on Tuesday that they plan to file complaints as early as Wednesday.
“Within the coming hours,” former government official Alix Fils-Aime said about the timing of his complaint. “There is a need for justice, for the coming generation to understand the character of a dictator, the harm it has done to a country.”
Fils-Aime was 26, working with peasants in the rural outskirts when he was “kidnapped at midnight with no food for 24 hours” and thrown into a jail cell, he said. He spent 18 months in solitary confinement before he was expelled from Haiti for 10 years.
“The whole country has suffered a tremendous setback despite what they are saying,” he said. “There is a lesson to be taught. When I was in power I could have sought revenge by arresting Duvalieriests. Now they are putting their ugly heads out. My best advice: repent.”
Robert Duval, a soccer star whom former U.S. President Jimmy Carter help release from jail, said he, too, plans to reinstitute the charges he once filed in the 1980s against Duvalier.
Still, he wondered if the Haitian government was serious about prosecuting Duvalier. Unlike most citizens, Duval said, Duvalier was walked out of the courtroom guided by police.
“It’s a test to see if they are serious about it or playing games,” he said. “Preval should do a truth commission. There has never been a real will to do it.”
With Duvalier back in Haiti, even in what appears to be poor health, Duval said, “it just stabs my heart.”
“He destroyed this country,” he said. “He killed a lot of people, he’s a murderer.”
Source: The Miami Herald.
