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25352: Hermantin(news)Exiled leader's money sought (fwd)




From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Fri, Jun. 10, 2005


HAITI
Exiled leader's money sought
The $5.6 million that former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier deposited in Swiss bank accounts was at the heart of an international dispute.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@herald.com

A $5.6 million bounty belonging to former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude ''Baby Doc'' Duvalier is at the center of an international dispute involving members of South Florida's Haitian community, the exiled dictator and the governments of Haiti and Switzerland.

Roman Catholic priest and former Miami Haitian activist the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste says he and other South Florida Haitians are entitled to the funds -- stashed in Swiss bank accounts -- as partial payment toward a $504 million judgment the community won against the Duvalier regime 18 years ago in U.S. courts.

At the very least, the funds shouldn't go to Haiti's interim government, argued Jean-Juste, who held a picket outside the Swiss consulate on Brickell Bay Drive in Miami on Thursday. ``They need to return the money to the legitimate government of Haiti, not Latortue.''

He was referring to interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, whose U.S.-backed government replaced the elected administration of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide following a February 2004 rebellion. Jean-Juste, an Aristide ally, has become a prominent player in Haiti's political landscape and doesn't recognize the interim government.

Jean-Juste and others said the Swiss government should be negotiating with victims of Duvalier's atrocities.

As a newly ordained priest in 1971, Jean-Juste said he was arrested and tortured by Baby Doc's secret police after he refused to attend a church service in Les Cayes, Haiti, and make an oath to the Duvalier government.

After Duvalier and his wife, Michelle Bennett Duvalier, fled Haiti in 1986, Jean-Juste, then living in Miami, filed a lawsuit in U.S. courts for ''well-documented corruption and human rights abuses'' against himself and the Haitian people.

The plaintiffs were awarded $504 million. Nearly two decades and countless Haitian governments later, neither he nor any of the victims has seen one cent of the money, said Miami immigration attorney Ira Kurzban.

Kurzban, who represented Jean-Juste, was later hired by then-President Aristide in 1991 to recoup more funds allegedly stolen by the Duvalier family and stashed in foreign bank accounts. He managed to get about $1 million, he said. Three years ago, the government of Switzerland froze the funds after ordering its foreign affairs ministry to negotiate a settlement.

The government had no choice but to consult Duvalier because ''a mutual assistance'' agreement with the Haitian government had expired, and legally Switzerland could not hand all of the money over to Haiti, said Ralf Heckner, a Swiss government spokesman in Washington, D.C.