An independent commission of inquiry into the Jan. 19 killings of a dozen or more inmates at a prison in Les Cayes, Haiti, was formally established by presidential decree this week, officials said Tuesday.
The commission was proposed in May after The New York Times published an investigation into the shooting deaths of detainees in connection with an escape attempt at the prison.
The Times’s investigation indicated that the Haitian police fatally shot unarmed inmates after storming the prison at the end of an uprising.
The panel’s six commissioners include three foreign experts, led by Gen. Salvatore Carrara of Italy, and three Haitians, among them the country’s ombudsman, Florence Elie. Ms. Elie is well known for overseeing the pretrial work in an important human rights case involving a peasant massacre in Raboteau in 1994.
The commissioners and three technical experts were deployed by Justice Rapid Response, a group of criminal justice and related professionals, at the request of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
Justice Rapid Response most recently assisted a commission of inquiry into a massacre in Guinea last fall.
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COMMENT:HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG
The world should have a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that someone like Florence Elie is on the investigating committee. The article mentions her part in the Raboteau Massacre of 1994.
The Robateau Massacre never happened, a fact that has been accepted by those who did a retrospective study of the alleged event.
On the day in question, a Lavalas group attacked the police caserne in Gonaives. Shots were fired. However, when Colonel Steve Lovasz, military attaché at the American embassy, tried to investigate, the day after the event, he could find no one who had been injured. He could find no bodies…nothing. In other words, it was a non-event.
Once Aristide returned, his people created a publicity trial that saw any and all potential opponents charged with murder. When a trial was planned, respectable judges refused to participate in the charade.
The mockery of justice handed out life sentences to General Cedras and a large number of others. It was a good move since someone convicted of murder is not usually accepted as a spokesman for anything.
The appointment of this lady shows how serious Preval takes the murders…NOT SERIOUS AT ALL!!!
Who knows, he may have had something to do with the killings. One would have to see a list of the victims to analyze what their role might be.
You are correct yet again.
Several of the victims were opponents of Preval and his clique. The emergency situation allowed for their liquidation.