After escorting Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier to court in the capital of Port-au-Prince, Haitian police returned the former dictator to his hotel in nearby Petionville late Tuesday. Haitian authorities say they have opened up a corruption and embezzlement case against Duvalier following hours of closed-door questioning. His lawyer, Gervais Charles, tells the AP that Haitian officials also took Duvalier’s passport – a document which many reports say had already expired – suggesting Baby Doc’s stay in Port-au-Prince could last significantly longer than the three days his partner Veronique Roy originally indicated it would. However, it remains unclear exactly who is calling the shots re: Duvalier’s status in the country. Gervais Charles, late Tuesday, on when/if his client might be leaving town: “If he has to leave (the country), he will ask and he will leave.”
The investigation which began Tuesday may take up to three months, say journalists. Contrary to various reports yesterday, the former dictator appears to have never been officially detained. And no charges have been filed against Duvalier for human rights violations committed during his 15 years in power. Moreover, Gervais Charles tells the Miami Herald the recently opened investigation stems from a 2008 criminal complaint against Duvalier, the file for which he says was lost after the earthquake.
The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, however, maintains that legal documentation for two embezzlement charges – one from a Swiss court in 2009 and a second stemming from a 1988 decision against Duvalier issued in a South Florida court – do exist. According to Brian Concannon, Jr., his organization has “boxes and boxes of evidence” related to Duvalier’s financial crimes. In addition, the Institute for Justice and Democracy says there is “an extensive public record” of human rights violations committed during Duvalier’s reign of terror.
Some, like Haitian journalist and former spokeswoman for the UN’s Sec. General, Michele Montas, have also indicated they will file criminal complaints against Baby Doc in the coming days.
Amnesty International, again Tuesday, after mistaken reports that Baby Doc’s trip to court Tuesday amounted to his official arrest:
“Haiti must investigate Jean-Claude Duvalier, and anyone else allegedly responsible for such crimes, some of which amount to crimes against humanity, in a trial that is thorough, independent and fair.”
In Geneva, the spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, tells the AP that the return of Duvalier raises the possibility that he be charged for human rights crimes committed under his regime but warns that Haiti’s “fragile” judicial system may be in no position to carry out such a case.
Meanwhile, a political crisis lingers. While police shuffled Duvalier to and from court Tuesday, Haitian electoral officials, in a new statement Tuesday, reiterated that they are not bound to recommendations made by the OAS and presented to the government by Sec. General José Miguel Insulza on Monday. Those recommendations – based on a questionable review undertaken by the OAS representatives in recent weeks – suggest government-backed candidate Jude Celestin be dropped from a second-round runoff in favor of Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly. In a detailed analysis of the report (available here), the DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research calls the OAS’s report “methodologically and statistically flawed” and “arbitrary.” In his column in The Guardian CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot offers more criticisms of the OAS report. His organization’s recommendation: complete annulment of the Nov. 28 vote and the holding of a new election – this time under “free and fair” conditions in which no parties are arbitrarily excluded from participating.
To other stories:
· In Guatemala, President Alvaro Colom decided to extend a state of siege in the northern province of Alta Verapaz for one additional month Tuesday. His unspecific reason: “more needs to be done.” The militarization of the north has sought to disrupt the activities of the Zetas by allowing the military to, in the AP’s words “detain suspects without warrants, conduct warrantless searches, prohibit gun possession and public gatherings, and control the local news media.” A report on the state of siege by In Sight says there have been few successes in the last 30 days. “A deep level of political corruption,” In Sight writes, “has ensured the Zetas’ continued operation in the region.”
· The New York Times, meanwhile, reports on the arrest of Flavio Méndez Santiago, considered to be the Zetas top operations director in Mexico’s southern states. Méndez was picked up by federal police outside Oaxaca city, the state capital of the state of Oaxaca earlier this week.
· From IPS, a report this morning on the growing problem of youth gangs in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central America. The report comes after the recent bombing of a bus in Guatemala which, investigators say, was a reprisal carried out against a bus company by the Mara 18 for unpaid extortion fees. Professor David Martínez-Amador, a specialist in organized crime, sees political motivations behind the recent uptick in high-profile violence:
“[T]he gangs are being used by the extreme right or others who have an interest in generating a climate of fear and insecurity, and I connect it to the violence that we expected in the run-up to the elections.”
Guatemalans will elect a new president and vice president, as well as 153 members of the single-chamber Congress, 20 representatives to the Central American Parliament, and 333 local governments in September of this year. More on similar gang problems in El Salvador and Honduras in the rest of the IPS report.
· US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske began a three-day visit to Colombia Tuesday where he will be assessing the country’s anti-drug efforts. AFP says Kerlikowske began by praising Colombia’s progress in its counter-narcotics efforts Tuesday. Kerlikowske: “Colombia's progress in improving security, reducing the influence of drug cartels, improving the economic situation for its people and stabilizing the country is nothing short of astonishing.” He went on to add that the US was committed to establishing new policies more focused on drug treatment and prevention in both its own country and, according to EFE, in Latin America. Venezuela’s El Universal also notes that Kerlikowske acknowledged his support for Venezuela’s new efforts to intercept aircrafts suspected of transporting drugs through its national air space. The US drug czar will not visit Venezuela but will make a stopover in Panama later in the week.
· Not discussed by Kerlikowske is another story making headlines in Colombia in recent weeks: the re-emergence of violent paramilitary groups once believed to have been largely demobilized between 2003 and 2006. The department of Cordoba, reports EFE, has become the epicenter of Colombia’s “new paramilitarism.” According to a recent statement from Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento (Codhes), “it is no longer possible to maintain that ‘para-militarism’ is ‘something of the past.’” Indeed, Codhes has begun documenting how new groups with “the same support, same structures, and same sources of financing” have been reborn out of the remains of the notorious Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). The NGO says these new groups are responsible for some 600 murders in Cordoba 2010, in addition to as many as 45 already in 2011. The Colombian government said recently it has documented an astounding 173,183 homicides and 34,467 forced disappearances committed by ex-paramilitaries between 2005 and Dec. 1, 2010 around the country. La Silla Vacía with more, after the recent murder of two Universidad de los Andes students in the department. And WOLA’s Adam Isacson with a bit more in a Just the Facts podcast.
· Adam Isacson also touches on a week of protests against gas price hikes in Chile’s south – what the CS Monitor called Sebastian Pinera’s “biggest crisis yet” and one which saw the Pinera government threaten to criminalize protest by using a Pinochet era state security law to put down the strikes. Mercopress reports today that the conflict appears to have been resolved after government officials and strike leaders signed an accord in Punta Arenas Tuesday. According to assembly sources, “the agreement calls for a 3 percent increase in gas prices through August, by which time a permanent price structure is supposed to be in place.”
· The AP says the US will move forward with a formal objection to Bolivia’s proposal to end a ban on coca-leaf chewing, as outlined in the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. On similar matters, Linda Farthing writes at Upside Down World on Bolivia’s experiment in the “social control” of coca production, which underpins the Morales government’s “coca yes, cocaine no” policy.
· El Universal reports that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez appears ready to use his special decree powers to move forward with an emergency housing law intended to aid those displaced by last month’s floods. Also from the paper, a report on how some opposition governors say they will accept Chavez’s words of conciliation offered in his address to the national parliament over the weekend.
· Finally, opinions. The Washington Post on Haiti seems to suggest the US consider flying Jean-Claude Duvalier out of Haiti should he overstay his visit. Journalist Emily Troutman with some interesting points about historical memory and historical revisionism in Haitian politics. And in Mexico’s El Universal, Insyde executive director Ernesto Lopez Portillo comments on a recent Nexos report on violence in Mexico, and the Mexican government’s on-going denial that spikes in murders have corresponded to the sites of increased militarization.
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