14630: Wharram: NYTimes.com Article: Former Haitian Army Officers Imprisoned (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: bryanwharram@brybiz.com

Former Haitian Army Officers Imprisoned

January 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:51 p.m. ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Two former Haitian army
officers who lived for years in the United States were
returned to their homeland and imprisoned for alleged
involvement in a 1994 massacre, officials said Tuesday.

Former Col. Carl Dorelien, 53, and former Lt. Col. Herbert
Valmond, 52, arrived Monday in Haiti escorted by U.S.
immigration officers. They were being held at Port-au
Prince's National Penitentiary, said Lovinsky
Pierre-Antoine, director of the National Migration Office.

They were among 38 former soldiers and army henchmen who
in 2000 were convicted in absentia of murder in the 1994
killings of slumdwellers in Raboteau, a shantytown in
Gonaives about 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince.

Sixteen others are now imprisoned for the slaughter,
largely serving life sentences.

During the massacre, soldiers and thugs burst into dozens
of homes, beating and arresting people. People who tried to
flee were shot. No one knows how many were killed, because
soldiers prevented victims' families from retrieving
bodies.

Witnesses who reported the names of at least 15 people
killed said dogs ate some bodies and others were washed out
to sea. International pathologists testified they could
identify only three victims.

Dorelien and Valmond deny involvement in the Raboteau
killings, and under Haitian law may seek new trials.

The slayings were part of attacks carried out to break
support for deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
following his ouster in a 1991 army coup. Dorelian was a
coup leader.

Soldiers and paramilitary thugs killed at least 3,000
people and maimed thousands more before U.S. troops invaded
in 1994 to end the bloodshed and halt an exodus of boat
people to Florida.

Dorelien, who won $3.2 million in the Florida lottery in
1997, faces a damage suit by the family of a victim in the
Raboteau massacre, Michel Pierre. His widow, Marie Jeanne
Jean, filed the suit Friday in Miami federal court.