25062: (news) Chamberlain: Haitian court overturns massacre convictions (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 10 (Reuters) - Haiti's Supreme Court has
overturned the convictions of military leaders in a 1994 massacre of slum
residents in Gonaives, reversing what human rights groups considered a
victory for Haiti's foundering justice system.
     In a case known as "Raboteau" after the seaside slum where the
killings took place, Haiti's highest court voided murder convictions
against dozens of military and paramilitary chiefs, many of whom had fled
and were tried in absentia in 2000.
     "The court ... overturns the judgment without referring to another
court and orders that all those accused be released if there are no further
charges against them," the Supreme Court said in a May 3 ruling made
available to Reuters on Tuesday.
     The Raboteau trial was considered a landmark for Haiti as a step in
bringing to justice an elite group of military and paramilitary officers
for human rights abuses committed during the violent military rule of the
early 1990s that followed the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
     Gunmen attacked the pro-Aristide slum before sunrise on April 22,
1994, at a time when supporters of the exiled president were routinely
jailed or killed in the troubled  Caribbean nation, the poorest country in
the Americas.
     People ran into the sea, were shot at and beaten. Lawyers said up to
15 were killed.
     Lawyers in the case said the high court ruled the trial court did not
have the authority to try the 53 defendants. Mario Joseph, a victims'
lawyer, questioned that rationale.
     "The Supreme Court had already visited the case prior to the trial and
it had never said the criminal court in Gonaives was not competent to hear
the case," he said. "Why is it only now, five years later, the Supreme
Court has found the tribunal was not competent?"
     Critics called the decision a severe setback for Haiti's flailing
judicial system and accused the U.S.-backed interim government, appointed
after the second ouster of Aristide last year, of meddling.
     "I'm disappointed but not surprised," said Brian Concannon, a U.S.
lawyer who helped prosecute the Raboteau case. "Judges that don't do what
the government says get fired or get intimidated."
     "The government had nothing to do with the decision of the Supreme
Court, which is part of an independent power," said Paul Gustave Magloire,
an adviser to Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.
     A Haitian court in November 2000 sentenced former coup leader Raoul
Cedras and 36 high-ranking military officers and associates to life in
prison for the massacre of slum dwellers.
     A week earlier, 16 other soldiers and accomplices were found guilty
for their roles.
     The defendants included Cedras and Philippe Biamby, two leaders of the
1991 coup that deposed Aristide, ex-police chief Michel Francois,
paramilitary commander Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, and Louis Chamblain, a
former army leader who returned to Haiti last year to lead rebels against
Aristide.
     Lawyers in the case said the ruling appeared to apply to the
defendants, including Chamblain, whose lawyer said he expected his client
to be released from prison soon.
     Concannon said the Raboteau case had been carefully scrutinized by
international legal experts and had been upheld by Haitian appeals courts
in the past. The new Supreme Court ruling does not reflect well on the
country's interim government, he said.
     "It shows that they are afraid of the precedent of human rights
violators being held accountable," he said.
     The interim government, headed by Latortue, was appointed by a council
of elders after Aristide fled Haiti in 2004 following a bloody revolt of
former soldiers led by Chamblain.




 REUTERS