14024: Edouard-News-Former Haitian leader in legal tug of war (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Felix Edouard <loveayiti@hotmail.com>

Posted on Wed, Dec. 04, 2002

Former Haitian leader in legal tug of war
BY MARIKA LYNCH
mlynch@herald.com




Prosper Avril


PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Prosper Avril, former Haitian president by coup, accused
torturer and one-time Miami mamey farmer, sits in the National Penitentiary
contemplating his future.

Three times a court has ordered his release, and three times the Haitian
government has kept him locked up. In the latest charge, the government says
Avril masterminded a peasant massacre in 1990, even though the general had
skipped the country by U.S. military jet the day before.

Sitting in the prison courtyard, beneath a banner that reads ''Long Live
Aristide,'' Avril blames his former political rival for his current
circumstance.

''I think he has something in his heart against me,'' Avril said of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Organization of American States and human-rights groups question Avril's
continued detention, which some see as revenge politics in the feeble
Haitian justice system.

''A scandal,'' said Pierre Esperance, director of the Haiti office of the
National Coalition of Haitian Rights.

''Arbitrary abuse of power,'' said Luigi Einaudi, assistant secretary
general of the OAS. ``Haiti isn't Switzerland, but some cases are pretty
obvious.''

The government maintains that there is no plot against Avril. In this latest
legal round, the government says Avril's lawyers merely asked the wrong
court to set him free -- an issue of jurisdiction.

`A DICTATOR'

''His lawyers made a mistake,'' said Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based lawyer for
the Haitian government.

''This guy is a dictator and a torturer. I wish Mr. Avril was put in the
proper context,'' Kurzban added.

A confidant and financial advisor to the former ruling Duvalier family and a
member of the presidential guard, Avril had an 18-month reign over Haiti.
When he took power in September 1988, ousting another military leader, he
promised to bring ''irreversible democracy'' to the country. But he never
called elections. He was forced to flee in March 1990 after protests
engulfed the country.

Part of the catalyst was a crackdown on opposition leaders. Six well-known
activists were beaten by soldiers, their bloodied bodies displayed on
television. One said he overheard Avril directing the beating by telephone.

The events led four prominent human-rights groups, including Americas Watch,
to call Haiti under Avril ``one more prisoner of a brutal despot willing to
use violence and terror to preserve his rule.''

The activists later sued in federal court in Miami. They won a $41 million
judgment for torture in July 1994, after Avril refused to participate in the
court proceedings.

While Avril was in power, Aristide was a popular and militant crusader
pressing for the country's first democratic elections. He campaigned for
Avril to step down, and for the removal of all Jean-Claude Duvalier
supporters from government positions.

After years in exile, including a period in which he bought a South
Miami-Dade County farm, Avril eventually returned to Haiti and lived in
relative obscurity, until he showed up at a May 2001 meeting of the
Democratic Convergence, an umbrella group of anti-Aristide parties.

Two weeks later, Avril was signing copies of his book, The Black Book on
Insecurity, at a Petionville restaurant when masked commandos swept him off
to prison. The book, still on sale in the capital for $12, blames Aristide's
rule for crime and uneasiness among Haitians. It ends with a list of 554
people killed between 1995 and 2000 when Aristide's party, Lavalas, was in
power.

Avril was charged with plotting against the government and arrested on a
6-year-old warrant signed by a dead judge. An appeals court ruled that his
arrest was arbitrary and illegal.

JAILED AGAIN

But as he left the National Penitentiary in April, ready to return with his
son to his gingerbread mansion in the suburbs, masked guards hauled him back
to jail again. The government accused him of masterminding a 1990 peasant
massacre in St. Marc, where 11 died in a land dispute.

Days after his arrest, the judge who signed that warrant fled to Miami and
told Radio Carnaval the arrest was political and that he had been pressured
to sign the warrant.

Avril maintains his innocence, saying he couldn't possibly have been
involved in the slayings, since he had left on a C-130 jet bound for
Homestead.

But Brian Concannon, a U.S. lawyer who lives in Haiti and works with the
government and family members of the massacre victims, said Avril had
planned the killings in advance. Relatives and residents testified to that
in court.

''It's an injustice to release somebody who has committed massive
human-rights violations without him being tried,'' Concannon said.

Despite an Oct. 22 appeals court ruling, which said Avril should be released
immediately because he was being held without a legal arrest warrant, he
remains behind bars, counting out the days with pencil slashes on a
notebook.

Though the country's largest prison is renowned for its deplorable
conditions, Avril lives in what he calls the ''VIP'' section. He still
sports a gold watch and wedding band and freshly pressed cotton slacks.

His family brings him home-cooked meals every day, fried goat and rice and
coffee for the morning.

Avril wants out, but he's not sure he'll be released soon. Though he says he
has no aspirations for office, Avril -- who formed his own political party
-- says Aristide's government fears he will be a candidate in proposed
upcoming elections.

``Aristide does not want me as a candidate. He's afraid of me being in front
of his party.''

Yet Avril says his eyes are on leaving Haiti. ''I can't be safe here,'' he
said. ``This is a government that creates situations. They invent cases for
you.''






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