Haitian describes torture by police to jurors (Dorelien trial / Miami)

[struggle4progress]

The horrors of torture in Haiti under a former military regime were outlined in a civil trial against a former Haitian army colonel that began Tuesday in Miami.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
[e-mail]

Lexiuste Cajuste, once a top labor union leader in Haiti, described in detail to a Miami jury Tuesday how military-overseen police officers in Port-au-Prince tortured him in 1993 ...

Cajuste's testimony came on the first day of a civil trial for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against former Haitian army Col. Carl Dorelien, a former high-ranking officer who won $3.2 million in the Florida Lottery in 1997 after he settled in Florida.

Attorneys for Cajuste, one of two plaintiffs in the case, claim Dorelien is responsible for the torture suffered at the hands of police and military officers -- not because Dorelien was personally involved, but because he was a member of the high command and his assignment was to ensure military discipline ...

The second plaintiff in the case is Marie Jeanne Jean, widow of Michel Pierre -- one of 26 men, women and children killed in 1994 by soldiers and paramilitary supporters in Raboteau, a poor neighborhood in Gonaives, Haiti. She is expected to testify this week.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/haiti/16744655.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Once again, the guest of honor at the torture party just happened to be a labor leader.

It's an old, old situation, isn't it, right-wing government military forces, or paramilitary forces trying to destroy the very people who are working to help improve the lot of the poorest of the poor, like labor leaders, human rights activists, teachers, doctors, clergy, or simply the helpless poor, themselves, caught with no place to hide from hell. It has been repeated all over the Western Hemisphere, and it's an old, very sad song.

If only their nights are kept sleepless, while the screams of their victims terrorize them in ways they never anticipated before they started preying on their fellow man/woman. Hope there actually IS a reckoning, a balance, even though we almost never see it.