From owner-haiti@lists.webster.edu Mon Jul 19 13:45:07 2004
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 11:48:00 -0500 (CDT)
From: Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>
To: Haiti mailing list <haiti@lists.webster.edu>
Subject: 22725: Fenton: Haiti: Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune appears
in court in broken legs case (fwd)
Sender: owner-haiti@lists.webster.edu
From: Anthony Fenton <apfenton@ualberta.ca>
Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune appears in court in broken legs case
BBC Monitoring Americas, 17 July 2004, 08:13 am
Text of report by Haitian Metropole radio on 16 July; passages within quites in Creole
Former Lavalas Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, who has been in jail since 27 June after he gave himself up to the Haitian National Police, appeared in court today amid strong police security and accompanied by his lawyers.
Examining Judge Fredi Fabien questioned Neptune for about 20 minutes. The former prime minister was questioned about the bloody events that took place in the School of Social Sciences on 5 December 2003. At that time many students were brutally attacked by members of Lavalas People's Organizations [OPs]. During that incident, the Lavalas scoundrels broke both legs of the dean of the State University, Pierre-Marie Paquiot. Paquiot was in court recently to testify in the case.
This afternoon, some partisans of former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, including former Deputy Gilvert Angervil, were present in
front of the court to offer support to Neptune when he arrived
there. Former Deputy Angervil said: They arrested Prime Minister
Yvon Neptune under the pretext that he took part in the La Syrie [La
Scierie] massacre, a case which was invented by the National Coalition
for Haitian Rights [NCHR]. They do not have a case and cannot bring
him to justice. So now they are only causing a diversion.
One of Neptune's lawyers, Attorney Ephesien Joachim said: The court has summoned him to appear for questioning about the Paquiot case.
The hearing took place without incidents.