Former military officers deported to Haiti

By Michael Deibert, Reuters, 28 January 2003

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jan 28 (Reuters)—Two former Haitian army colonels, one of them a multimillion-dollar U.S. lottery winner, were deported from the United States after being convicted in Haiti for their role in a massacre, officials said on Tuesday.

Carl Dorelien, 53, and Hebert Valmond, 52, were flown to Port-au-Prince International Airport on a U.S. government aircraft late on Monday and transferred immediately to Haiti’s National Penitentiary.

They were convicted in absentia in Haiti in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison for participation in a 1994 massacre of nearly two dozen supporters of then-exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the Raboteau neighborhood of the city of Gonaives.

The two, who had been living in Florida since the mid-1990s, were the latest in a string of former foreign government officials and military officers to be arrested by U.S. authorities in recent years over allegations of human rights violations in their home countries.

Dorelien bought one of two winning tickets in a 1997 Florida State lottery that split a $6.3 million award.

He and Valmond were among 37 people who were tried in absentia and convicted for involvment in the 1994 massacre.

They (Dorelien and Valmond) will have the right to a new trial on all criminal charges, with no presumptions resulting from the previous convictions, said Brian Concannon, an attorney who prosecuted the Raboteau trial for the Haitian government.

Concannon is a U.S. lawyer who works in an international lawyers’ office set up by the Haitian government to prosecute human rights cases.

An INS spokeswoman, Barbara Gonzalez, said Dorelien, who lived in Port St. Lucie, and Valmond, who lived in Tampa, entered the United States on visitors’ visas. The two were taken into INS custody after their convictions and lost appeals contesting their deportation.

The Raboteau massacre took place during the exile of Aristide, who became Haiti’s first freely elected president in 1991 but was ousted in a coup months later. U.S. troops helped restore him to power in 1994. Aristide was re-elected in November 2000.

Valmond and Dorelien were the latest to fall foul of a more aggressive pursuit of alleged human rights violators from foreign countries by U.S. authorities.