Politics
Haiti: Former president Aristide appears before judge to provide evidence in murder case
Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. PHOTO/File
(Reuters) – Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appeared in public for the first time since returning from exile more than two years ago as he arrived at court on Wednesday to testify about the assassination more than a decade ago of a popular radio journalist and human rights activist.
In a testament to his continued political sway, hundreds of supporters sang pro-Aristide songs and waved his picture behind police barricades down the street from the courthouse. They had pledged to accompany him from his home in a Port-au-Prince suburb to the court and back despite a ban on demonstrations for the day.
Aristide, still a polarizing figure, was accompanied by political allies and armed police guards to the judge’s chamber in the capital where he was to answer questions in the case of Jean Dominique, who was gunned down in April 2000 along with a security guard outside Haiti-Inter, the radio station he owned.
His death occurred as Aristide was preparing to run for re-election in presidential elections that year and Dominique was also rumored as a potential candidate.
While several low-level arrests of the suspected gunmen were made at the time, the matter of who ordered the murder has remained one of Haiti’s great unsolved crimes.
Thirteen years later, the Dominique file has been re-opened, and several high-profile witnesses and persons of interest have already been called to the chamber of the investigating judge, Yvickel Dabrésil.
Former President René Préval, who was in power at the time of Dominique’s killing, slipped in and out of the courthouse for questioning without incident earlier this year.
