14243: Hermantin: Haitian widow focused on justice (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Dec. 29, 2002  Miami Herald

JIM DEFEDE: Columnist
Haitian widow focused on justice

Michele Montas had been feeling anxious for days, and Christmas was no
exception. Throughout the holiday dinner at her daughter's home, Montas had
trouble relaxing and cut the festivities short so she could return to her
house before it was dark outside.

Montas, the widow of famed Haitian journalist Jean Dominique, still runs the
couple's radio station, Radio Haiti Inter, one of the few sources for fair
and honest news reporting in Haiti. In the 2 ˝ years since Dominique was
gunned down in the station's courtyard, Montas has been crusading to expose
her husband's killers.

''The only reason that I am still doing radio, still being a journalist, is
to get justice in this case,'' she told me a few weeks ago when I visited
her at the station. ``I'm more interested in the truth than anything else.''

Several weeks earlier, the judge presiding over the Dominique investigation
announced he would release his findings by the end of December. As of
Christmas, though, there was still no report, causing Montas' unease to
grow. She knew the men responsible for her husband's killing did not want
that report published.

''The only way they know how to respond is through killings,'' Montas
thought. But whom would they target? The judge? The prosecutor? Montas
herself? Killing Montas would certainly send a bold message as to the
seriousness of the men behind Dominique's killing.

After Christmas dinner, she told her bodyguards not to take the usual route
to her home in the hills above Port-au-Prince. A little after 5:30 p.m.,
Montas pulled into her driveway. As her bodyguards tended to the car and the
front gate, she entered her house and immediately heard gunfire outside.

Two men, coming from the road along which she normally drives, started
firing at her bodyguards. Montas grabbed her 86-year-old mother and pushed
her to the floor for safety. She then ran upstairs to find the gun that her
husband had hidden in the house years ago. She never fired a gun in her
life, but she wasn't going to just let some strangers come into her home and
kill her without a fight.

Outside, one of her bodyguards, Maxime Seide, was on the street, trying to
hold back the would-be assassins while yelling for the other bodyguard to
close and lock the steel gate before the gunmen could get in.

Frustrated they couldn't gain access to the grounds and house, the attackers
fled, but not before fatally shooting the 26-year-old Seide eight times. A
member of Montas' security detail for two years, he was paid the equivalent
of 100 U.S. dollars a month, which for Haiti is considered good money. Most
bodyguards receive only $70. Schoolteachers earn about $40 a month.

''I spoke to his parents,'' Montas told me Friday. ``His parents adored him.
He was a wonderful young man. I was afraid they were going to blame me for
their son being killed, but they told me he loved his job and that he had
always told them he was ready to take a bullet for me. I was very moved by
that.''

In the days after the attempt on her life, Montas has been visited by a host
of government officials, including former President René Preval as well as
current President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

''He expressed his concern for my safety,'' Montas said of Aristide. ''In
return, I urged him to protect the judge and the prosecutor'' investigating
Jean Dominique's case.

Can Aristide guarantee justice in the Dominique case? Few people think so,
including Aristide.

Now it seems the much-anticipated report may not be issued until January.

Nevertheless, Montas remains stoic.

''I am beyond fear,'' she said. ``I lost the one who was dearest to me when
they killed Jean. I don't think I know what being scared is anymore.''







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