Haiti: Amnesty Int list of mass murderers

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr360132004

Haiti
Perpetrators of past abuses threaten human rights and the reestablishment of the rule of law

Leaders of rebel forces:

Louis Jodel Chamblain - deputy leader of paramilitary group FRAPH convicted in trials of 1994 Raboteau massacre and 1993 extrajudicial execution of Antoine Izméry. Sentenced in both trials to forced labour for life.

Jean Pierre Baptiste ('Jean Tatoune') - FRAPH member convicted in Raboteau massacre trial. Sentenced to forced labour for life.

Escaped from prison during current crisis and of concern:

Jean-Claude Duperval - deputy commander in chief of the army convicted in Raboteau massacre trial. Sentenced to forced labour for life and returned to Haiti from the USA to serve the sentence.

Hébert Valmond - lieutenant colonel and head of military intelligence convicted in Raboteau massacre trial. Sentenced to forced labour for life and returned to Haiti from the USA to serve the sentence.

Carl Dorelien - Colonel convicted in Raboteau massacre trial. Sentenced to forced labour for life and returned to Haiti from the USA to serve the sentence.

Jackson Joanis - military police captain convicted of the extrajudicial execution of Antoine Izméry, and sentenced to forced labour for life. Returned from the USA to Haiti to serve the sentence. Also indicted in the investigation into the assassination of Father Jean Marie Vincent; case not yet brought to trial.

Castera Cénafils - army captain convicted in Raboteau massacre trial. Sentenced to forced labour for life.

Prosper Avril- General and leader of the 1988 coup d'état, indicted in the investigation into the 1990 Piatre massacre; case not yet brought to trial.

1. Introduction: reappearance of convicted or indicted perpetrators of human rights violations on the scene in Haiti

One of the most significant human rights achievements in the years following the Otober 1994 return to democratic order in Haiti was the holding of trials in several high-profile cases of egregious past violations. These trials were crucial, not just as a means of ensuring that the truth about past violations emerged, but as tangible evidence, to a Haitian population which had suffered violent repression on a massive scale, of a newly-functioning rule of law and respect for human rights.

The holding of perpetrators from the disbanded Haitian Armed Forces, the Forces Armées dHaïti (FADH),and the paramilitary Front Révolutionnaire Armé pour le Progrès d'Haïti (FRAPH), Revolutionary Armed Front for the Progress of Haiti(1) to account for their crimes was nearly unprecedented in Haiti's history. The trials of those implicated in such grave violations as the 1994 Raboteau massacre and the 1993 assassination of pro-democracy activist Antoine Izméry gave hope that, for the first time, the cycle of political violence might well and truly be broken.

In a devastating portent for the future of human rights in Haiti, however, a number of those convicted of those crimes are once again free in Haiti, and some have re-emerged as commanders of rebel groups.

In recent weeks, Amnesty International has repeatedly expressed its grave concern about the presence of notorious convicted human rights perpetrators such as Louis Jodel Chamblain and Jean Pierre Baptiste ('Jean Tatoune') as leaders of the rebel forces.

These forces now effectively control much of the country and have been allowed to enter the capital, despite the presence of the Multinational Interim Force. The primary rebel leader Guy Philippe, a former army officer and one-time Haitian National Police commissioner who fled the country in 2000, has reportedly expressed confidence that they will be given a prominent and influential role in public life.

The rebellion began on 5 February, with attacks on the police station and other government buildings by rebels in Gonaïves, department of the Artibonite. It swiftly spread to other areas in the north and centre of the country, and over the next two weeks government authority was forced out of over half of the national territory. Rebels declared their intention to march on the capital Port-au-Prince. Reports of human rights abuses committed by both sides during the attacks have ranged from unlawful killings to arbitrary detentions.

Other perpetrators convicted in the same trials of participating in the same violations as Louis Jodel Chamblain and 'Jean Tatoune' are among the prisoners who escaped from the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince on Sunday 29 February, in the atmosphere of lawlessness that followed the departure of President Jean Bertrand Aristide from Haiti. Amnesty International fears that the escaped prisoners may well join their former colleagues in the rebel forces, in this way gaining access to weapons and potentially to positions of influence in which they may commit further human rights violations.

See http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr360132004 for the full article. It is extremely detailed, carefully written, thorough and devastating (once you follow through with the obvious conclusions, unstated in the report) for the US and French governments and the mainstream media in their support for these mass murderers.