The Haiti Support Group hails recent progress in the campaign against impunity
On March 23, the Haitian police arrested Port-au-Prince gang leader, Ronald Camille, aka Ronald Cadavre, who is charged with manslaughter in connection with the shooting dead of Fritzner Jean outside the Parliament on 10 September 2001. Camille is currently detained in the Delmas police station. A court appearance scheduled for Tuesday March 26 has been postponed to a later date.
On March 25, the U.S. immigration authorities deported to Haiti the former Haitian Army captain, Jackson Joanis, who is faces charges related to his role in the 1993 murder of Antoine Izmery. Joanis is in police custody and, according to the police spokesman, will soon appear in court to face the charges against him.
These two developments are significant steps forward in the Haitian people's long struggle to bring an end to a state of impunity, to bring human rights violators to justice, and to turn back a tide of increasing lawlessness. The Haiti Support Group joins with the Platform of Haitian human rights organisations in hoping that this is just the beginning of a real coming to grips with the people's demands for justice.
The Haiti Support Group hopes that these positive developments will be followed by other initiatives to end impunity in Haiti. On the eve of the second anniversary of the still unsolved murder of Jean Dominique, the Haiti Support Group calls for immediate and forthright action on the part of the Haitian authorities so that the guilty parties can be rapidly brought to justice.
BACKGROUND
Ronald Camille
Ronald Camille is known as a fervent supporter of the Lavalas Family political party. According to Haitian media reports, he is employed by the National Port Authority in Port-au-Prince, but he is better-known as the leader of a gang of youths from the slum area of La Saline, and has often been accused of orchestrating violence. Human rights organisations have denounced the government for tolerating the actions of Camille's gang and of other pro-Lavalas Family groups that are known as chimères.
Camille first gained public notoriety when, on October 2, 2000, he attempted to necklace* the then Delmas police chief, Jacky Nau, during a demonstration in front of the Provisional Electoral Council headquarters. (*In Haiti, the term - to necklace - refers to killing of a political opponent by putting a car tyre around the victim's neck and setting it alight.)
He is wanted in connection with the murder of another popular organisation member, Fritzner Jean, aka Bobo, outside the Parliament on 10 September 2001. According to witnesses, Camille shot Jean dead following an argument.
Ronald's brother, Franco Camille, claims that the death was the result of a weapon going off accidentally. Since then, Ronald Camille has been the subject of an arrest warrant but, apart from an unsuccessful police raid on La Saline in late September, there has apparently been no attempt to arrest him, and Camille has moved around the capital without any apparent concern.
On March 23, Camille was waiting at the Port-au-Prince airport to welcome President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on his return to Haiti from the Monterrey international development and poverty summit. According to the police, he was taken by surprise and did not try to resist arrest.
Jackson Joanis
In the early 1990s, Jackson Joanis was the head of the notorious Anti-Gang police department, one of the worst units of the Haitian Army when it came to human rights. Human rights groups charge that he condoned the killings and brutal beatings of dozens of students, journalists and others.
He is listed as an abuser of human rights in a 1994 U.S State Department report to Congress. "Suspects brought in for questioning at the Anti-Gang Unit were regularly beaten with fists and clubs," according to that report. "If the beating got out of hand, as reportedly often happened, the victim was finished off and the body dumped." The report's sources were presumably the U.S. military officers at the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince who, according to media reports, were in close contact with Joanis during the three years of the military coup regime in Haiti (1991-94).
In its 1998-99 annual report, the Geopolitical Drug Watch organisation, claimed that Joanis played a key role in protecting those who set up drug-running operations in Haiti during the 1991-94 coup years. The report says that Fernando Burgos Martinez, a major Colombian drug baron linked to the Cali cartel, ran his operations in conjunction with Haitian businessmen from the capital's largest casino, El Rancho. Protection for the casino was provided by Captain Joanis, who openly admitted that he was paid more for providing this service than he earned as a policeman.
After fleeing Haiti following the United Nations military interventions that restored President Aristide to office in 1994, Joanis went to live in Hollywood in Broward County, Florida where he drove a cab. On September 25, 1995, he was convicted in absentia in Haiti for his role in the 1993 murder of Antoine Izmery, a businessman and ardent supporter of the Lavalas movement for economic and political change. The Haitian court sentenced Joanis to life in prison.
In mid-November 2000, the American Immigration Service (INS) arrested Joanis and 13 other former "members of armed forces and paramilitary organisations" in Miami for violations of human rights made before their arrival in the United States. Joanis' attorney argued in a Miami immigration court that Joanis faced torture and death if he was returned to Haiti and, until this week, he had remained in the US while his appeal was considered.
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