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Haiti: Will Duvalier escape justice?
International legal experts were eager to help. Preval accepted an offer from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights for technical assistance, and others groups followed.
In private meetings, they stressed to Auguste and his colleagues that there were legal grounds to prosecute Duvalier on crimes that included murder, torture and false imprisonment, Auguste said.
A Duvalier trial would mark a departure from the impunity that has long undermined Haiti’s judicial system, Human Rights Watch said.
But in the end, the year-long investigation turned out to be as absurd as it was tragic, the case a near casualty of the very institution that it sought to strengthen.
In a country where petty criminals languish in jail for years, Duvalier has flaunted his freedom since his return.
He was put under house arrest but was seen touring the high-end hotels and restaurants above the capital, lounging on beaches and even sitting in the front row of a memorial with former U.S. President Bill Clinton on the two-year anniversary of the earthquake. The event was held at a mass grave where bodies from the Duvalier regime were once dumped.
Prosecutors responsible for laying out the case against Duvalier couldn’t stay on the job long enough, stalling the investigation. In Haiti, state prosecutors introduces charge but it is an investigative judge who collects evidence and decides if the charges warrant a trial.
Auguste, the first prosecutor, was fired after he failed to seek medical attention for a suspect he was interviewing who had been tortured by police officers, according to a U.N. report on alleged police killings. Auguste, now in private practice, said he tried to call a doctor but couldn’t reach one before the victim died at the hospital. He said he was put on an indefinite leave and a court cleared him of wrongdoing.
