[Previous entry: "FBI Expects Violence at GOP Convention"] [Next entry: "Buried alive under California's law of 'three strikes and you're out'"]

08/18/2004:

"Upset at Haiti acquittal"

Guardian UK
A jury acquitted the Haitian former paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain of murder yesterday after a 14-hour trial that caused outrage among human rights groups, who have attacked the country's US-backed government.

Mr Chamblain and his co-defendant, Jackson Joanis, were cleared of the murder of Antoine Izmery, a former justice minister and financier of the former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to Stanley Gaston, a defence lawyer.

Viles Alizar of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, said eight witnesses had been called by the prosecution but only one had appeared, saying he knew nothing about the case. For the defence, two defence witnesses had been present, but they provided few details.

Jury selection began on Monday morning and journalists were told the day would likely be devoted to it.

Mr Chamblain was remanded to face another trial over the killings of several people in a pro-Aristide stronghold in northern Gonaives in 1994. Mr Joanis, a former police chief in Port-au-Prince, was also held to face murder charges over the killing of the Rev Jean-Marie Vincent, a pro-Aristide priest who was shot leaving his office in 1994. It could be another month before the pair's next trial, Mr Gaston said.

Mr Chamblain was a co-leader of the paramilitary Front for the Advancement and Progress of the Haitian People, a group that was blamed for some 3,000 killings from 1991 to 1994, during the regime that followed Mr Aristide's first ousting in 1991.

When US troops came to the country in 1994 to restore Mr Aristide, Mr Chamblain fled to neighbouring Dominican Republic. In 1995 he was convicted in absentia and given two life sentences for his alleged role in the 1993 assassination of Izmery and the 1994 killings of scores of Aristide supporters.

Haitian law provides that people judged in their absence have a right to a new trial if they return.