15232: RSF: Haiti : Reporters Without Borders outraged by result of investigation in Jean Dominique' case (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: RSF Americas <ameriques@rsf.org>

Press release
25 March 2003

HAITI

Jean Dominique murder
Reporters Without Borders outraged by result of investigation

Reporters Without Borders said today it was outraged by the just-announced
result of the enquiry into the killing of Haiti's best known journalist, Jean
Dominique, because it only named those who carried out the murder and not those
who ordered it.

"The authorities are trying to tell us there was nobody behind this crime, just
as they did in the killing of journalist Brignol Lindor," said Reporters
Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard.  "After three years of
investigation, and only a few days before the third anniversary of Dominique's
death on 3 April, the enquiry report is simply an insult to all those fighting
for justice in Haiti."

The investigating judge, Bernard Saint-Vil, reportedly sent his 33-page
indictment in the case to the state prosecutor on 21 March.

"How can it be that individuals accused by the previous investigating judge,
Claudy Gassant - people such as Sen. Dany Toussaint and several of his
associates - have disappeared from the list of people to be charged with this
crime?" asked Ménard.

"Nobody is fooled by this result.  Ever since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
was re-elected in 2000, his government has been preparing a whitewash of
Toussaint."

Judge Gassant was forced to flee abroad after indicting Toussaint, an ally of
Aristide, and the Haitian senate rejected the judge's request for Toussaint's
parliamentary immunity to be lifted so the case against him could proceed.

"The investigation report is also bad news for all Haitian media that criticise
the government," said the press freedom organisation.  "It sends a message to
the enemies of press freedom that they have nothing to fear from the
judiciary."  President Aristide is on the Reporters Without Borders worldwide
list of 41 "predators of press freedom" for giving government cover to those
who physically attack and kill journalists.

Dominique's widow, Michèle Montas, who has run his radio station, Radio Haiti
Inter, since he was killed, told Reporters Without Borders that the
investigation report was "disgraceful" and that she would appeal against it.

A report that clears Sen. Toussaint and his associates

Judge Saint-Vil has indicted six people:  Dymsley Millien ("Tilou") for murder
and Jeudi Jean Daniel ("Guimy"), Philippe Markington, Ralph Léger, Ralph Joseph
and Freud Junior Desmarrates for being accomplices.  All are currently in
prison.

Dr. Alix Charles, Benjamin Delano, lawyer Ephesien Joassaint, Sen. Toussaint,
his bodyguard Franck Joseph and his "right-hand man" Richard Salomon were not
charged because, the judge said, "there is not enough clear evidence of their
responsibility or complicity in the murder."

A Reporters Without Borders investigation ("Who killed Jean Dominique?"),
published a year after the murder, cited Charles, Delano, Joassaint, Salomon
and Toussaint in connection with the mysterious death of Jean Wilner Lalanne,
who was suspected of being the link between the organisers of the murder and
those who carried it out.

Lalanne died in June 2000 during an operation for a buttock wound received
during his arrest.  He was operated on by Dr Charles, an orthopaedic surgeon,
helped by Dr Delano, even though he had asked for another surgeon.  Charles
said he died of a pulmonary embolism, but this was contradicted by an autopsy.
Two months later, by the time a new autopsy had been ordered, Lalanne's body
had unaccountably disappeared from the morgue.

The Reporters Without Borders investigation highlighted the links between
Toussaint, Charles and Lalanne.  Jean-Claude Nord, Toussaint's lawyer, had
recommended Joassaint to Lalanne as a lawyer.  Joassaint then asked Charles to
do the operation.  Charles was known to be a friend of Salomon.  Toussaint has
always denied knowing Lalanne but a witness said Joseph, his bodyguard, had met
him.

The report said investigators had concluded the murder was planned in the
course of several meetings.  In November 2001, a second important suspect,
Panel Rénélus, was lynched by a mob after being arrested by police.  Judge
Gassant, who was at the scene, said police handed him over to the mob.

An enquiry hampered by many obstacles

The outspoken Dominique, Haiti's best-known journalist and political
commentator, was killed in the courtyard of his radio station on 3 April 2000.
He had criticised all sides - supporters of the former Duvalier family
dictatorship, ex-military figures, members of the country's wealthy families
and those he suspected in President Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party of wanting
to turn the organisation away from its original principles.

The murder investigation was assigned in September 2000 to Judge Gassant after
his predecessor, Judge Jean-Sénat Fleury, had resigned after receiving
threats.  Legal sources said on 28 May 2001 that Toussaint had been charged
with the murder.  Gassant fled to the United States after his mandate expired
on 3 January 2002 and was not immediately renewed by Aristide.  He had been
repeatedly harassed after indicting Toussaint.  Since July last year, the
investigation has been in the hands of Judge Saint-Vil.

For the past three years, virtually all state institutions have obstructed the
murder enquiry.  The justice ministry never gave Judge Gassant adequate
protection despite threats to him.  Police refused to carry our arrest warrants
and were accused of handing over leading suspect Rénélus to the mob that
lynched him.  The senate refused to lift Toussaint's parliamentary immunity.

Dominique's widow was the target of an apparent attempt to kill her at her home
last December 25, in which one of her bodyguards, Maxime Séide, was shot dead.
She took the attack as a warning to all those involved in the murder
investigation.

On 21 February this year, she announced the station was going off the air
because of many threats to its staff. "Three of our people have already been
killed and we don't want to lose anyone else," she said.  The radio's
journalists and technical staff wrote to the management on 1 February
expressing their great concern about many incidents since the beginning of the
year.
Montas said the station was only closing temporarily and would resume
operations when the situation was more secure.


--
Régis Bourgeat
Despacho Américas / Americas desk
Reporters sans frontières
5, rue Geoffroy-Marie
75009 Paris - France

tél. : +33 (0) 1 44 83 84 68
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