DAVOS, Switzerland - Haiti’s president suggested that he might pardon former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, saying reconciliation for his nation is more important than making the man known as “Baby Doc’’ pay for his bloody rule.
In an interview, Michel Martelly suggested he has little appetite for a trial that could be explosive for the nation, recovering from decades of political turmoil and a devastating earthquake two years ago.
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Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Haitians Hanker For the Days of Duvalier
"Duvalier ordered to face some charges" January 31, 2012
PORT-AU-PRINCE - A Haitian judge said yesterday that former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier should face trial for corruption, but not the more serious charges of human rights violations committed during his rule.
Investigative Magistrate Carves Jean said the statute of limitations had run out on the human rights charges but not on the accusations of misappropriation of public funds. He did not explain his reasoning, but the once-feared ruler known as “Baby Doc’’ is widely believe to have used money from the Haitian treasury to finance his life in exile....
Duvalier, who has been free to roam about the capital since his surprise return from exile last year, would face no more than five years in prison.
Duvalier’s lawyer Reynolds Georges, who had argued that the case should be dismissed entirely because the statute of limitations had expired on all the charges, said he would appeal the decision as soon as he received the paperwork.
“We’re going to appeal that decision . . . and throw it in the garbage can,’’ Georges said.
Haiti has a weak judicial system, with little history of successfully prosecuting even simple crimes, and the government is preoccupied with reconstruction from the devastating January 2010 earthquake.
A majority of Haitians are too young to have lived under Duvalier but many still remember his government’s nightmarish prisons and violent special militia.
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Also see: Ceremony to recall Haiti earthquake
