The Miami Herald
Herald.com
Sunday,
January 26, 2003
Ex-Haitian colonel sued to pay massacre
victim's family
achardy@herald.com
A human rights organization that targets foreign torture suspects
has sued a former Haitian military officer, who is already in U.S. immigration
custody, seeking compensation for the family of a victim of a 1994 massacre in
Haiti.
The Center for Justice & Accountability filed the lawsuit in
Miami federal court seeking unspecified financial compensation for a Haitian
woman and her two children. Marie Jeanne Jean's husband, Michel Pierre, was
killed in a massacre in Raboteau, a poor neighborhood outside Gonaives north of
Port-au-Prince, the capital.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in Miami federal district court under
the same legal doctrine of ''command responsibility'' that the group
successfully used last year to persuade a federal civil jury in West Palm Beach
to order two former Salvadoran generals to pay $54.6 million to three victims
of torture in El Salvador. The former generals have appealed the jury decision.
WHAT IT MEANS
Under the command responsibility argument, military commanders can
be held liable for the actions of subordinates because they knew or should have
known that soldiers under their control were committing abuses and failed to
take measures to stop them.
The lawsuit comes as the Immigration and Naturalization Service
prepared to deport Carl Dorelien. This month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
11th Circuit in Atlanta denied Dorelien's request for a whole-court review of
the case and lifted a restraining order preventing his deportation. Ana
Santiago, an INS spokeswoman in Miami, said shortly after the court ruled that
the INS planned to deport Dorelien soon.
Even if deported, Dorelien can still pursue his appeal outside the
country.
Dorelien has been in INS detention since 2001, when he was
arrested by immigration agents at his home in Port St. Lucie.
DENIES ANY ROLE
Dorelien's attorney, Jeffrey Devore, said he could not comment
because he has not seen the lawsuit. But court documents show Dorelien has
denied any involvement in the massacre in which about two dozen people died.
One document, for example, says Dorelien 'heard about an `incident' in Raboteau
involving an attack on a military facility at Raboteau -- not an attack on
civilians.''
Dorelien also was quoted as saying in the document that he did not
give orders to soldiers.
But Dorelien was indicted and convicted in absentia during a trial
in Haiti over the Raboteau massacre. Dorelien and other former Haitian military
officers who led a coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 were
sentenced to life in prison with hard labor for their alleged role in the
massacre. Dorelien is a former army colonel who was part of the Haitian
national command authority after Aristide was overthrown.
LAWSUIT'S PURPOSE
Joshua Sondheimer, litigation director for the Center for Justice
& Accountability in San Francisco, said his group filed the lawsuit because
``we don't believe he should be allowed to keep the benefits he has obtained by
being in the United States.''
While in exile in Florida, Dorelien won $3.2 million in the state
lottery. On June 28, 1997, Dorelien held one of two winning tickets bought in
Fort Pierce that split a jackpot of $6.3 million, according to Florida Lottery
records. Court records show Dorelien is to be paid in 20 annual installments of
$159,000.
In its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals noted that ``Dorelien
is not just a convicted mass murderer, but a fairly well-off one.''
The lawsuit alleges that Haitian soldiers and paramilitary
sympathizers attacked Raboteau, killing 26 people.
''Michel Pierre was fatally wounded, and soldiers buried his body
in a shallow grave by the sea,'' the lawsuit says. ``Marie Jeanne Jean
discovered his body several days later.''