Compilation of recent news on Yvon Neptune, also Jocelerme Privert, Amanus Mayette
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Jens Iverson
May 3, 2005, 10:21:30 AM5/3/05
to HaitianPolit...@googlegroups.com, Haiti List
More news available at:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/HaitianPoliticalPrisoners
http://hastingshumanrights.org/
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
http://www.ijdh.org
May 2, 2005
Yvon Neptune Ill, But Refuses to Leave Haiti Without Justice
Human Rights Group Denounces Unconstitutional Plan to Send an
Unconscious Neptune Into Exile
Political prisoner Yvon Neptune, seriously ill and on day 16 of a
hunger strike, remains incarcerated in Haiti despite persistent
reports in the Haitian and international press that he has been flown
out of the country. Mr. Neptune, Haiti's last constitutional Prime
Minister, has insisted for months that he will not leave the prison
until the Interim Haitian Government either tries him for the
allegations against him or drops the charges. The interim government
is seeking to defuse criticism of its political prisoner policies by
forcing Mr. Neptune to leave the country without going to court. The
Group for the Defense of the Rights of Political Prisoners (GDP), a
Haitian human rights organization, reports that the government plans
to wait until Mr. Neptune loses consciousness, then transport him out
of the country.
On Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1, several media outlets,
including the Associated Press, ABC News and Radio Kiskeya in Haiti
reported that Mr. Neptune was about to leave or had already left.
Those reports, based on sources within the Haitian government and a
foreign embassy, were not true. As of 2 PM Monday, May 2 (Haiti
time), Mr. Neptune remains in prison.
Yvon Neptune has been in prison since June 2004, when he turned
himself into police after hearing a radio announcement of a warrant
for his arrest. He has never been brought before the judge in his
case, despite a constitutional requirement of a hearing within 48
hours. Mr. Neptune has received several death threats, and at least
three assassination plots have been reported against him.
Human rights groups, including the GDP and Amnesty International,
world leaders like UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and religious
leaders like Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste have
called for Mr. Neptune's release or trial. On April 19, a team of
lawyers from the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, the Institute
for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and the Hastings Human Rights
Project for Haiti filed a complaint before the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights on Neptune's behalf (see
http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_recent_news_april-4-19-05.htm).
For months, Mr. Neptune has insisted that he will not leave until the
government brings his case to trial or admits that the charges were
without foundation. In February, he even voluntarily returned to the
prison after he was removed at gunpoint during a prison break. Over
the weekend, his family members reiterated that he refuses to leave
Haiti without seeing justice done.
Haiti's interim government attempted to deflect the growing
international pressure for Neptune's release by offering to fly him
to the Dominican Republic over the weekend for treatment. Neptune,
refused, once again insisting on justice, not an easy escape for
either himself or the interim government.
According to Ronald Saint-Jean, the Secretary-General of the Group
for the Defense of the Rights of Political Prisoners (GDP),
government sources indicate that the authorities plan to wait until
Mr. Neptune loses consciousness, then transport him out of the
country. Mr. Saint-Jean, and GPD's lawyer, Mario Joseph of the
Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, "energetically protest against
this cynical and criminal measure." They note the irony that the
government can quickly arrange transport to a hospital in the
Dominican Republic, but could not transport Mr. Neptune before a
judge in over 10 months.
Saint-Jean and Joseph note that Neptune's forced exile would be yet
another violation of his constitutional rights, as Article 41 states
clearly that "no Haitian National can be deported or forced to leave
the national territory for any reason whatsoever."
For more information:
Groupe de Defense des Droits Des Prisonniers Politiques, Ronald
Saint-Jean, Secretary-General: 509-244-1254, 509-588-7550 (Haiti)
Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, Mario Joseph, Managing Lawyer:
509-554-4284, 509-221-8686 (Haiti)
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, Brian Concannon Jr.,
Director: 541-432-0597 (USA), Brian...@aol.com, www.ijdh.org
(background information on Yvon Neptune's case, including the
complaint filed before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, Marguerite Laurent (spoke with
Neptune family members over the weekend), www.margueritelaurent.com
Brian Concannon Jr.
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
www.ijdh.org
Neptune aurait refusé de partir à la dernière minute
Rumeurs sur son décès : un juge atteste de sa présence à la "résidence" de
Pacot
Confusion sur son départ ou non : valse de contradictions au niveau des
sources officielles
Posté le dimanche 1er mai 2005
Par Radio Kiskeya
L¹ex-premier ministre lavalas Yvon Neptune aurait refusé à la dernière
minute
de laisser le pays, exigeant que le juge en charge de son dossier prononce
sa
libération sans condition afin qu¹il puisse continuer à jouir de ses droits
civils et politiques dans le pays, et pas ailleurs.
Les informations relatives à ce nouveau développement émanent de l¹Annexe du
Pénitencier National (Pacot) où une ambulance s¹est rendue par 2 fois ce
dimanche pour transporter vraisemblablement vers l¹aéroport international de
Port-au-Prince l¹ex-premier ministre qui serait dans un très mauvais état en
raison d¹une grève de la faim de 15 jours, selon les officiels.
Dimanche soir, une intense rumeur a circulé selon laquelle M. Neptune serait
décédé. Il n¹en est rien. Un juge qui était présent dimanche soir à la
« prison » de Pacot était formel sur la présence à l¹intérieur de
M. Neptune.
Dans un communiqué rendu public dimanche à la mi-journée, la Primature a
invoqué la raison d¹Etat pour annoncer qu¹elle est sur le point de prendre
d¹importantes dispositions en raison de la « détérioration accélérée de
l¹état
de santé de M. Neptune et de son refus catégorique de s¹alimenter ou de se
faire soigner ». La Primature appelle la population au calme, à l¹unité et à
la mobilisation autour des intérêts supérieurs de la nation à la veille des
élections.
Depuis samedi soir, une certaine confusion règne sur le départ ou non du
pays
de M. Yvon Neptune. Des médias ont été informés de ce départ par des sources
officielles qui allaient être immédiatement démenties par d¹autres sources
officielles. Une confusion qui semble être entretenue en vue
vraisemblablement
de tester l¹opinion publique en manipulant les médias ou d¹amoindrir le choc
que provoquerait irrémédiablement la décision d¹autoriser le départ de
l¹ex-premier ministre lavalas pour raison de santé.
Ex-Haiti PM Reportedly Flying Into Exile
By ARIANA CUBILLOS
.c The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - The former prime minister under ousted
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is flying into exile after months in
detention, a Western diplomat and a radio station reported Sunday.
Former Premier Yvon Neptune, who had been held without charge for 10
months in connection with political killings during the February 2003
rebellion that ousted Aristide, will be flown to the neighboring
Dominican Republic by helicopter on Sunday, the diplomat said. The
diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement
has not been made.
Independent Radio Kiskeya reported that Neptune already had been flown
out late Saturday after doctors said a hunger strike had left him near
death. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.
An official at Port-au-Prince's international airport said they were on
standby for the event but had not yet received confirmation from
officials in Haiti's interim government, who could not be reached for
comment.
Neptune initially was considered a traitor by Aristide loyalists when he
handed power to an interim president, Boniface Alexandre, within days of
Aristide's Feb. 29 flight as rebels led by former soldiers were
converging on the capital.
At the time Neptune resisted pressure from diplomats and interim
government officials, installed after U.S. troops arrived, to go into exile.
After his arrest in June, he became a rallying point for both militants
demanding the release of hundreds of Aristide officials and loyalists
jailed without charge, as well as for human rights activists demanding
he be tried. Aristide is in exile in South Africa.
The interim government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue accused Neptune
of orchestrating the killing of Aristide opponents in the western town
of St. Marc during the rebellion, allegations he denies.
Latortue had resisted months of international pressure to release Neptune.
05/01/05 09:38 EDT
Reuters AlertNet
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29187001.htm
April 29, 2005
Haiti's jailed former PM resumes hunger strike
Source: Reuters
By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 29 (Reuters) - Haiti's jailed former
prime minister, Yvon Neptune, is "closer to death than life" after
resuming a hunger strike 10 months after being jailed on accusations
of organizing a massacre, a human rights group said on Friday.
Neptune, who served under ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and
has called the massacre allegations politically motivated, started a
hunger strike on Feb. 20 but began eating again on March 10 after he
was transferred to a hospital in Port-au-Prince run by a U.N.
peacekeeping force.
The head of the Committee to Protect the Rights of the Haitian
People, Ronald St-Jean, said Neptune went back on hunger strike on
April 17 and was now in critical condition.
"Neptune is closer to death than life after 10 days without drinking
or eating anything," St-Jean told Reuters. "We urgently call on the
international community to intervene and save Neptune's life," he
said.
U.N. officials said they would check on Neptune's condition.
Neptune and detained former interior minister Jocelerme Privert are
accused of masterminding what Aristide's opponents have called a
massacre on Feb. 11, in La Syrie, a small village near St Marc, 60
miles (100 km) north of the capital.
The incident occurred during an armed revolt by street gangs and
former soldiers that drove Aristide from power.
An interim government was appointed to run the country until
elections later this year, and a 7,000-strong U.N. force of troops
and police is trying to keep the peace in the impoverished Caribbean
country. But political violence has continued, and Aristide
supporters accuse the interim authorities of targeting them.
The massacre accusation was brought by the National Coalition for
Haiti Rights (NCHR-Haiti), and a St Marc group called RAMICOS, which
opposed Aristide and his Lavalas Family party, including through
violence. The two organizations say 50 people were killed by Aristide
supporters.
The U.N. independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet,
has dismissed accounts of a massacre.
After an investigation this month, Joinet concluded that both
supporters and foes of Aristide were killed in clashes.
"What I believe, contrarily to those who contest my thesis, is that
we really can talk about a confrontation," he said.
Privert was taken before a judge in St Marc on April 18, but could
not be interrogated in the absence of his lawyer and was not formally
charged, said his wife, Ginette Privert.
Neptune, who was treated for over a month at the U.N. hospital, was
also taken last week to St Marc but was not brought before the
investigating judge to be formally charged.
In addition to continuing political violence, Haiti has also been
wracked by escalating lawlessness.
A political leader, Dr. Jean Enold Buteau, brother of Education
Minister Pierre Buteau, was kidnapped by armed men on Thursday but
released overnight. Sources close to the family said a ransom was
paid.
© Reuters Foundation.
HAITI PROGRES
http://www.haitiprogres.com
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
April 27 - May 3, 2005
Vol. 23, No. 7
"LA SCIERIE" PRISONERS DRAGGED BEFORE ST. MARC KANGAROO COURT
Haiti's constitutional Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was taken to Saint
Marc on Friday, April 22, to appear before examining magistrate
Clunie Pierre Jules on charges that he ordered an alleged massacre in
La Scierie, a suburb of that city (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No.
16, 6/30/2004). Two other Lavalas government officials are accused of
involvement in this supposed massacre, the disputed existence of
which is championed primarily by the Haiti branch of the National
Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), a pro-coup "human rights" group.
One day earlier, Neptune had been transferred from the hospital of
the Argentinian military base on the Airport Road to a private house
in Pacot, which officials of the United Nations Mission for the
Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) describe as an annex of the
National Penitentiary.
The de facto authorities then woke up the ailing PM in the middle of
the night and transported him to St. Marc at 4:00 a.m.. But the trip
was in vain because the examining judge was not in her chambers to
carry out his hearing, even if Neptune had wanted to answer her
questions. In fact, Judge Pierre Jules did not even know that Neptune
was being transported to Saint Marc.
The de facto authorities unilaterally organized the would-be hearing
as a media show, in which the Haitian National Police (PNH) and
MINUSTAH played prominent roles. The basic rights of the prisoner
were trampled since, among other things, his lawyer was not even
advised.
In the course of the night-time transfer, Neptune was severely
beaten. Roused in the dead of night, Neptune "resisted and apparently
even bit someone who hit him, and that's when they
tortured him," explained journalist Jean Jean-Pierre on Pacifica
Radio's Democracy Now on April 25. "They beat him up simply because
that is traditionally the reaction of Haitian police."
After being hospitalized by the UN last month, Neptune began a second
hunger strike to protest his illegal incarceration and to demand his
immediate release. "I will take neither food nor liquid, and I will
continue the strike until the de facto authorities and UN
unconditionally release me or take part directly in my death,"
Neptune warned in an April 20 statement.
Samuel Madistin, the lawyer of the victims of the alleged La Scierie
"massacre," deplored that Neptune was transported to Saint Marc
without the examining magistrate being informed beforehand. Madistin
said the de facto authorities were trying to prove to the public that
Neptune was under their control, not the MINUSTAH's.
Constitutional Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert and Deputy Amanus
Mayette were also taken to Saint Marc to go before Judge Pierre
Jules, under the same illegal conditions. But both said they had
nothing to say to the examining magistrate. "I answered no question
concerning Scierie," Mayette declared in a statement from the
National Penitentiary where he is imprisoned. "I simply said that I
did not have a lawyer... Wanting to lynch me in the media will not
have any effect on me, but will be only used to make you servants of
shame and lowness and to reduce to you to a sub-human state."
Privert's wife said that her husband, who was taken to St. Marc very
early in the morning of Monday, April 18, only made a statement
asking the judge to take note that he was brought to Saint Marc in an
illegal manner and without the presence of his lawyer. Privert was
then taken back to his Canape-Vert hospital room in Port-with-Prince,
where he receives medical care following the deterioration of his
health due to his justice-seeking hunger strike.
In reviewing the facts of La Scierie, the United Nations independent
expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, recently said that
deaths resulted not from a massacre, but a confrontation between
rival armed bands in Saint Marc on the eve of President Aristide's
kidnapping in February 2004.
--
Jens Iverson
J.D. Candidate
UC Hastings College of the Law
http://HastingsHumanRights.org
http://HastingsToHaiti.org
Currently gratefully accepting help regarding:
* Summer 2005, NYC: Free housing and part time work
* Public International Law contacts and inspiration
* Informal music-making opportunities
* Legal ways to be filled with joy while doing well in law school
* An accurate, useful world view
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/HaitianPoliticalPrisoners
http://hastingshumanrights.org/
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
http://www.ijdh.org
May 2, 2005
Yvon Neptune Ill, But Refuses to Leave Haiti Without Justice
Human Rights Group Denounces Unconstitutional Plan to Send an
Unconscious Neptune Into Exile
Political prisoner Yvon Neptune, seriously ill and on day 16 of a
hunger strike, remains incarcerated in Haiti despite persistent
reports in the Haitian and international press that he has been flown
out of the country. Mr. Neptune, Haiti's last constitutional Prime
Minister, has insisted for months that he will not leave the prison
until the Interim Haitian Government either tries him for the
allegations against him or drops the charges. The interim government
is seeking to defuse criticism of its political prisoner policies by
forcing Mr. Neptune to leave the country without going to court. The
Group for the Defense of the Rights of Political Prisoners (GDP), a
Haitian human rights organization, reports that the government plans
to wait until Mr. Neptune loses consciousness, then transport him out
of the country.
On Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1, several media outlets,
including the Associated Press, ABC News and Radio Kiskeya in Haiti
reported that Mr. Neptune was about to leave or had already left.
Those reports, based on sources within the Haitian government and a
foreign embassy, were not true. As of 2 PM Monday, May 2 (Haiti
time), Mr. Neptune remains in prison.
Yvon Neptune has been in prison since June 2004, when he turned
himself into police after hearing a radio announcement of a warrant
for his arrest. He has never been brought before the judge in his
case, despite a constitutional requirement of a hearing within 48
hours. Mr. Neptune has received several death threats, and at least
three assassination plots have been reported against him.
Human rights groups, including the GDP and Amnesty International,
world leaders like UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and religious
leaders like Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste have
called for Mr. Neptune's release or trial. On April 19, a team of
lawyers from the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, the Institute
for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and the Hastings Human Rights
Project for Haiti filed a complaint before the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights on Neptune's behalf (see
http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_recent_news_april-4-19-05.htm).
For months, Mr. Neptune has insisted that he will not leave until the
government brings his case to trial or admits that the charges were
without foundation. In February, he even voluntarily returned to the
prison after he was removed at gunpoint during a prison break. Over
the weekend, his family members reiterated that he refuses to leave
Haiti without seeing justice done.
Haiti's interim government attempted to deflect the growing
international pressure for Neptune's release by offering to fly him
to the Dominican Republic over the weekend for treatment. Neptune,
refused, once again insisting on justice, not an easy escape for
either himself or the interim government.
According to Ronald Saint-Jean, the Secretary-General of the Group
for the Defense of the Rights of Political Prisoners (GDP),
government sources indicate that the authorities plan to wait until
Mr. Neptune loses consciousness, then transport him out of the
country. Mr. Saint-Jean, and GPD's lawyer, Mario Joseph of the
Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, "energetically protest against
this cynical and criminal measure." They note the irony that the
government can quickly arrange transport to a hospital in the
Dominican Republic, but could not transport Mr. Neptune before a
judge in over 10 months.
Saint-Jean and Joseph note that Neptune's forced exile would be yet
another violation of his constitutional rights, as Article 41 states
clearly that "no Haitian National can be deported or forced to leave
the national territory for any reason whatsoever."
For more information:
Groupe de Defense des Droits Des Prisonniers Politiques, Ronald
Saint-Jean, Secretary-General: 509-244-1254, 509-588-7550 (Haiti)
Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, Mario Joseph, Managing Lawyer:
509-554-4284, 509-221-8686 (Haiti)
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, Brian Concannon Jr.,
Director: 541-432-0597 (USA), Brian...@aol.com, www.ijdh.org
(background information on Yvon Neptune's case, including the
complaint filed before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, Marguerite Laurent (spoke with
Neptune family members over the weekend), www.margueritelaurent.com
Brian Concannon Jr.
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
www.ijdh.org
Neptune aurait refusé de partir à la dernière minute
Rumeurs sur son décès : un juge atteste de sa présence à la "résidence" de
Pacot
Confusion sur son départ ou non : valse de contradictions au niveau des
sources officielles
Posté le dimanche 1er mai 2005
Par Radio Kiskeya
L¹ex-premier ministre lavalas Yvon Neptune aurait refusé à la dernière
minute
de laisser le pays, exigeant que le juge en charge de son dossier prononce
sa
libération sans condition afin qu¹il puisse continuer à jouir de ses droits
civils et politiques dans le pays, et pas ailleurs.
Les informations relatives à ce nouveau développement émanent de l¹Annexe du
Pénitencier National (Pacot) où une ambulance s¹est rendue par 2 fois ce
dimanche pour transporter vraisemblablement vers l¹aéroport international de
Port-au-Prince l¹ex-premier ministre qui serait dans un très mauvais état en
raison d¹une grève de la faim de 15 jours, selon les officiels.
Dimanche soir, une intense rumeur a circulé selon laquelle M. Neptune serait
décédé. Il n¹en est rien. Un juge qui était présent dimanche soir à la
« prison » de Pacot était formel sur la présence à l¹intérieur de
M. Neptune.
Dans un communiqué rendu public dimanche à la mi-journée, la Primature a
invoqué la raison d¹Etat pour annoncer qu¹elle est sur le point de prendre
d¹importantes dispositions en raison de la « détérioration accélérée de
l¹état
de santé de M. Neptune et de son refus catégorique de s¹alimenter ou de se
faire soigner ». La Primature appelle la population au calme, à l¹unité et à
la mobilisation autour des intérêts supérieurs de la nation à la veille des
élections.
Depuis samedi soir, une certaine confusion règne sur le départ ou non du
pays
de M. Yvon Neptune. Des médias ont été informés de ce départ par des sources
officielles qui allaient être immédiatement démenties par d¹autres sources
officielles. Une confusion qui semble être entretenue en vue
vraisemblablement
de tester l¹opinion publique en manipulant les médias ou d¹amoindrir le choc
que provoquerait irrémédiablement la décision d¹autoriser le départ de
l¹ex-premier ministre lavalas pour raison de santé.
Ex-Haiti PM Reportedly Flying Into Exile
By ARIANA CUBILLOS
.c The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - The former prime minister under ousted
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is flying into exile after months in
detention, a Western diplomat and a radio station reported Sunday.
Former Premier Yvon Neptune, who had been held without charge for 10
months in connection with political killings during the February 2003
rebellion that ousted Aristide, will be flown to the neighboring
Dominican Republic by helicopter on Sunday, the diplomat said. The
diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement
has not been made.
Independent Radio Kiskeya reported that Neptune already had been flown
out late Saturday after doctors said a hunger strike had left him near
death. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.
An official at Port-au-Prince's international airport said they were on
standby for the event but had not yet received confirmation from
officials in Haiti's interim government, who could not be reached for
comment.
Neptune initially was considered a traitor by Aristide loyalists when he
handed power to an interim president, Boniface Alexandre, within days of
Aristide's Feb. 29 flight as rebels led by former soldiers were
converging on the capital.
At the time Neptune resisted pressure from diplomats and interim
government officials, installed after U.S. troops arrived, to go into exile.
After his arrest in June, he became a rallying point for both militants
demanding the release of hundreds of Aristide officials and loyalists
jailed without charge, as well as for human rights activists demanding
he be tried. Aristide is in exile in South Africa.
The interim government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue accused Neptune
of orchestrating the killing of Aristide opponents in the western town
of St. Marc during the rebellion, allegations he denies.
Latortue had resisted months of international pressure to release Neptune.
05/01/05 09:38 EDT
Reuters AlertNet
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29187001.htm
April 29, 2005
Haiti's jailed former PM resumes hunger strike
Source: Reuters
By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 29 (Reuters) - Haiti's jailed former
prime minister, Yvon Neptune, is "closer to death than life" after
resuming a hunger strike 10 months after being jailed on accusations
of organizing a massacre, a human rights group said on Friday.
Neptune, who served under ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and
has called the massacre allegations politically motivated, started a
hunger strike on Feb. 20 but began eating again on March 10 after he
was transferred to a hospital in Port-au-Prince run by a U.N.
peacekeeping force.
The head of the Committee to Protect the Rights of the Haitian
People, Ronald St-Jean, said Neptune went back on hunger strike on
April 17 and was now in critical condition.
"Neptune is closer to death than life after 10 days without drinking
or eating anything," St-Jean told Reuters. "We urgently call on the
international community to intervene and save Neptune's life," he
said.
U.N. officials said they would check on Neptune's condition.
Neptune and detained former interior minister Jocelerme Privert are
accused of masterminding what Aristide's opponents have called a
massacre on Feb. 11, in La Syrie, a small village near St Marc, 60
miles (100 km) north of the capital.
The incident occurred during an armed revolt by street gangs and
former soldiers that drove Aristide from power.
An interim government was appointed to run the country until
elections later this year, and a 7,000-strong U.N. force of troops
and police is trying to keep the peace in the impoverished Caribbean
country. But political violence has continued, and Aristide
supporters accuse the interim authorities of targeting them.
The massacre accusation was brought by the National Coalition for
Haiti Rights (NCHR-Haiti), and a St Marc group called RAMICOS, which
opposed Aristide and his Lavalas Family party, including through
violence. The two organizations say 50 people were killed by Aristide
supporters.
The U.N. independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet,
has dismissed accounts of a massacre.
After an investigation this month, Joinet concluded that both
supporters and foes of Aristide were killed in clashes.
"What I believe, contrarily to those who contest my thesis, is that
we really can talk about a confrontation," he said.
Privert was taken before a judge in St Marc on April 18, but could
not be interrogated in the absence of his lawyer and was not formally
charged, said his wife, Ginette Privert.
Neptune, who was treated for over a month at the U.N. hospital, was
also taken last week to St Marc but was not brought before the
investigating judge to be formally charged.
In addition to continuing political violence, Haiti has also been
wracked by escalating lawlessness.
A political leader, Dr. Jean Enold Buteau, brother of Education
Minister Pierre Buteau, was kidnapped by armed men on Thursday but
released overnight. Sources close to the family said a ransom was
paid.
© Reuters Foundation.
HAITI PROGRES
http://www.haitiprogres.com
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
April 27 - May 3, 2005
Vol. 23, No. 7
"LA SCIERIE" PRISONERS DRAGGED BEFORE ST. MARC KANGAROO COURT
Haiti's constitutional Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was taken to Saint
Marc on Friday, April 22, to appear before examining magistrate
Clunie Pierre Jules on charges that he ordered an alleged massacre in
La Scierie, a suburb of that city (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No.
16, 6/30/2004). Two other Lavalas government officials are accused of
involvement in this supposed massacre, the disputed existence of
which is championed primarily by the Haiti branch of the National
Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), a pro-coup "human rights" group.
One day earlier, Neptune had been transferred from the hospital of
the Argentinian military base on the Airport Road to a private house
in Pacot, which officials of the United Nations Mission for the
Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) describe as an annex of the
National Penitentiary.
The de facto authorities then woke up the ailing PM in the middle of
the night and transported him to St. Marc at 4:00 a.m.. But the trip
was in vain because the examining judge was not in her chambers to
carry out his hearing, even if Neptune had wanted to answer her
questions. In fact, Judge Pierre Jules did not even know that Neptune
was being transported to Saint Marc.
The de facto authorities unilaterally organized the would-be hearing
as a media show, in which the Haitian National Police (PNH) and
MINUSTAH played prominent roles. The basic rights of the prisoner
were trampled since, among other things, his lawyer was not even
advised.
In the course of the night-time transfer, Neptune was severely
beaten. Roused in the dead of night, Neptune "resisted and apparently
even bit someone who hit him, and that's when they
tortured him," explained journalist Jean Jean-Pierre on Pacifica
Radio's Democracy Now on April 25. "They beat him up simply because
that is traditionally the reaction of Haitian police."
After being hospitalized by the UN last month, Neptune began a second
hunger strike to protest his illegal incarceration and to demand his
immediate release. "I will take neither food nor liquid, and I will
continue the strike until the de facto authorities and UN
unconditionally release me or take part directly in my death,"
Neptune warned in an April 20 statement.
Samuel Madistin, the lawyer of the victims of the alleged La Scierie
"massacre," deplored that Neptune was transported to Saint Marc
without the examining magistrate being informed beforehand. Madistin
said the de facto authorities were trying to prove to the public that
Neptune was under their control, not the MINUSTAH's.
Constitutional Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert and Deputy Amanus
Mayette were also taken to Saint Marc to go before Judge Pierre
Jules, under the same illegal conditions. But both said they had
nothing to say to the examining magistrate. "I answered no question
concerning Scierie," Mayette declared in a statement from the
National Penitentiary where he is imprisoned. "I simply said that I
did not have a lawyer... Wanting to lynch me in the media will not
have any effect on me, but will be only used to make you servants of
shame and lowness and to reduce to you to a sub-human state."
Privert's wife said that her husband, who was taken to St. Marc very
early in the morning of Monday, April 18, only made a statement
asking the judge to take note that he was brought to Saint Marc in an
illegal manner and without the presence of his lawyer. Privert was
then taken back to his Canape-Vert hospital room in Port-with-Prince,
where he receives medical care following the deterioration of his
health due to his justice-seeking hunger strike.
In reviewing the facts of La Scierie, the United Nations independent
expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, recently said that
deaths resulted not from a massacre, but a confrontation between
rival armed bands in Saint Marc on the eve of President Aristide's
kidnapping in February 2004.
--
Jens Iverson
J.D. Candidate
UC Hastings College of the Law
http://HastingsHumanRights.org
http://HastingsToHaiti.org
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