In a lightening trial during the dead of night, a Haitian court on Aug. 17 overturned the murder convictions of two men who headed military and paramilitary death-squads during the 1991-1994 coup d’état.

In September 1995, Jodel Chamblain, the number two of the paramilitary militia known as the Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress (FRAPH), and Jackson Joanis, the former Haitian Army captain who headed the Port-au-Prince police’s feared Anti-Gang Unit, were both convicted in absentia for the murder of democracy activist Antoine Izméry on Sep. 11, 1993. On that date, Anti-Gang attachés and FRAPH goons dragged Izméry from the Sacred Heart church where he was leading a mass commemorating a massacre and shot him in the head in the middle of a street.

But both men were found not guilty after a non-stop all-night 14-hour trial at which only one prosecution witness dared show up, and he was not an eyewitness. The trial was announced only three business days earlier.

Human rights groups immediately howled with outrage. Amnesty International called the re-trial a “mockery” and an “insult to justice” marking “a very sad record in the history of Haiti.” The retrial “was set up without proper instruction and investigation from the Prosecutor, most of the evidence used in the first trial has been destroyed or is missing since the last armed rebellion, false witnesses have been called to testify and no serious efforts have been made to find the genuine witnesses and ensure their security,” Amnesty said.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) also issued a scathing four-page dissection of the “sham trial,” saying that the de facto government of U.S.-installed Prime Minister Gérard Latortue “staged the trial to deflect criticism of its human rights record without alienating its military and paramilitary allies.”

The IJDH report catalogued the numerous irregularities and illegalities in the trial and pre-trial procedures, highlighting the government prosecution’s transparent maneuvers to exclude witnesses and evidence that might have harmed the defendants case.

The prosecutors “did not add any additional documentary evidence to the case file,” the IJDH report says, “not even the section on the Izméry killing from Haiti’s Truth and Justice Commission report,” a voluminous and intensely researched book issued after the 1991-1994 coup. “Haitian and international human rights groups that are known to possess information relevant to the case or to have access to witnesses were never contacted for the investigation,” the IJDH continued.

“Today’s trial of Chamblain and Joanis indicates a full return to Haiti’s historical injustice, and the elimination of the foundations erected with so much sweat and blood,” the IJDH concluded. “While political prisoners with no evidence or accusations in their case files continue to fill the National Penitentiary, convicted murderers are acquitted in a charade trial, their files chock full of evidence not even opened.”

With the return of Haiti’s constitutional government in 1994, Chamblain had fled into exile in the neighboring Dominican Republic to escape prosecution. There, he lived in Santo Domingo and trained with other former Haitian Army soldiers before leading a column of them back into Haiti in January 2004 on a mission to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Chamblain’s “rebels” were, pathetically, too few and unpopular to do so, but, magnified by lavish and extensive media exposure, they succeeded in providing the excuse for U.S. Marines to kidnap Aristide on Feb. 29.

After himself acting as a judge in impromptu “rebel” tribunals of Lavalas sympathizers after the coup, Chamblain became something of an embarrassment to the de facto regime and its U.S. sponsors. So he struck a deal for a re-trial with de facto Justice Minister Bernard Gousse and on April 22 took up residence in the Pétionville jail, which he freely roams and regularly leaves for dinner and parties.

Gousse has declared presciently that Chamblain “has nothing to fear” from the Haitian justice system (under the coup government) and has raised the possibility that he could be pardoned by the de facto president for “his great service to the nation” in helping to overthrow Haiti’s constitutional government.

Joanis fled to the U.S. in 1994 but was deported back to Haiti in 2001, because of his record of political persecution. He was identified as a major human rights abuser in reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the Organization of American States and even the U.S. Government.

Both Chamblain and Joanis face more trials, but they too are likely to be bad jokes. Chamblain will be re-tried for his leading role in organizing the 1994 Raboteau massacre, for which he was sentenced to a life term in absentia in 2000. Joanis will stand trial for the 1994 assassination of Father Jean-Marie Vincent, a progressive priest.

The following is a statement by Haiti’s National Popular Party (PPN) read at the Forum of Argentine-Cuban Friendship held in Santa Fe, Argentina on Aug. 14-15.

Comrades and Friends,

We salute the Forum of Argentine-Cuban Friendship, which is an important link in the chain of solidarity which restrains U.S. imperialism in its aggressive moves against revolutionary Cuba.

We in Haiti’s Parti Populaire National (PPN) are today faced with yet another military occupation of our nation, orchestrated by Washington. We as a party are committed to resisting this imperialist act in every possible way and by all means necessary.

This military aggression is not just a move against the Haitian people, but also a step in Washington’s relentless encroachment on our neighbor Cuba. We have no doubt that the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 29 was conceived by Pentagon strategists and ideologues like Otto Reich and Roger Noriega as a stepping stone for an assault on Cuba.

But what makes this third military occupation of Haiti even more shameful is that it is being facilitated by governments which call themselves socialist and progressive, such as that of Argentina’s President Nestor Kirschner. Argentina is sending some 600 troops as a part of the U.S.-arranged United Nations force which props up the illegal Latortue regime, made up of Haiti’s most reactionary forces. It unites, in an uneasy peace, Haiti’s assembly-industry bourgeoisie with the feudal landowning class along with death squad leaders, former Duvalierist military generals, and drug dealing CIA agents. This was the alliance assembled to turn back the Haitian people’s sovereign act of democratically electing President Aristide.

How could Kirschner have sunken this low? Has he forgotten the role of Washington in supporting the “Dirty War” against the Argentine progressive movement in the 1970s? Has he forgotten Washington’s support for Britain when it punished Argentina for daring to challenge the colonial theft of the Malvinas?

What crumbs has Washington offered Kirschner to turn Argentine guns against the Haitian people in order to help crush a democratically elected government and free up U.S. troops to wage merciless war in Iraq and Afghanistan?

This same condemnation can of course be leveled at Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Chile’s Ricardo Lagos, who are also more and more acting like Washington’s lapdogs in Haiti and elsewhere.

Therefore, we call on the Forum of Argentine-Cuban Friendship to denounce Kirschner’s unprincipled collaboration in the military occupation of Haiti as an aggression not just against the Haitian people and their sovereignty, but as a gesture of support to Washington in its continuing maneuvers against Cuba.

Venceremos!

Ben Dupuy, Secretary General
Parti Populaire National (PPN)