Haiti

Escape of deportees heightens Haiti tension

Four dangerous men deported from Florida are now on the loose and could become a disruptive element for the U.S.-led multinational force.

[Times photo (2002) ]

A demonstrator protesting the INS detention of Herbert Valmond carries his photo at a 2002 protest at a Bradenton courthouse.

[AP photo] Opponents of ousted President Jean-Bertrant Aristide are seen fleeing gunshots at a rally in Port-au-Prince on Sunday. Six, including a foreign journalist, were killed. Marines fired back at the gunmen. Previous Haiti coverage

PORT-AU-PRINCE - In Haiti, when presidents fall from power, the jails empty fast.

Last Sunday was no exception.

When news spread early in the morning that president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had left the country, pandemonium broke out in Port-au-Prince's downtown Central Penitentiary.

Inside, prisoners set fires in their cells to get guards to unlock the doors. Relatives and friends of the inmates began to gather in the street outside, armed with rocks. Within minutes they had broken the locks off the main gates and swarmed in. Guards offered no resistance.

The entire prison population of about 1,088 escaped.

Haiti's lawless streets can ill afford the new influx of convicts. But among the rapists and common criminals were a small group of perhaps even more dangerous men. At least four are deportees from Florida, top brass of the disbanded Haitian Armed Forces, accused of participating in some of the country's most bloody war crimes.

Among them is Col. Hebert Valmond, 53, who until recently was living quietly in Tampa as an Pentecostal minister of his own church, L'Eglise de Dieu de la Nouvelle Alliance, on the corner of Nebraska and New Orleans avenues.

The former head of military intelligence, Valmond was arrested in April 2002 and deported to Haiti in January 2003.

News of the prison escape reached Valmond's family in Temple Terrace on the same day.

"I was so happy, jumping up and down," said his wife, Elisabeth Valmond on Sunday. "I was waiting for this day."

In a curious twist, Valmond's son, Hebert Jr., a U.S. citizen, is serving in the United States Marines, the main component of a 5,000-strong multinational force sent to Haiti this week to stabilize the country. His unit has been deployed to Haiti, and he could join it any day, according to a U.S. military spokesman.

Also ecstatic is the Central Florida family of Maj. Gen Jean-Claude Duperval, the military's former No. 2 and the most senior of the four escaped officers. Duperval, 59, was working on a tourist boat at Disney World until his arrest. Another of the deportees, the military's head of personnel, Col. Carl Dorelien, 54, lived in Port St. Lucie. In 1997 he won $3.2-million in the Florida state lottery. It is believed he collected $350,000 to $400,000 before his arrest, when the payments were stopped.

The fourth man, police captain Jackson Joanis, worked as a Hollywood, Fla., cab driver.

The mass Feb. 29 jail break - human rights activists calculate that in all some 3,583 prisoners escaped from the country's 20 prisons - is an especially demoralizing blow for the country's efforts to bring justice for the crimes of Haiti's military rules.

The Florida four are all accused of major human rights crimes in Haiti during a three-year military dictatorship between 1991-94. The three military officers were convicted in absentia in 2000 of participating in one of Haiti's most notorious massacres in a seaside shantytown known as Raboteau, in the port city of Gonaives.

Joanis is accused separately of torturing political prisoners and the assassination of two prodemocracy activists, both close friends and backers of Aristide.

At Raboteau, about 25 people were killed in the predawn attack carried out by Haitian army soldiers and paramilitaries in April 1994 to crush a hotbed of pro-Aristide militants. The massacre caused such an outcry that the U.S. ambassador visited the site. But the Haitian High Command conducted an investigation, headed by Valmond, which concluded that no massacre occurred. Instead, he claimed that a local army post came under attack from the locals and the soldiers had no choice but to defend themselves.

But that version was immediately questioned by U.S. officials who said they found no bullet holes to indicate the army barracks had been attacked.

In September that year U.S. troops landed to oust the military and restore Aristide to power. Several top military commanders went into golden exile. Others were given U.S. visas, apparently to remove potential troublemakers. One of Aristide's first moves was to disband the Armed Forces. Valmond decided to stay. In late 1995 Aristide's Truth and Justice Commission resurrected the Raboteau investigation. Valmond was still in the country when the commission finished the final report in February 1996.

But three months later he changed his mind. In May 1996 he visited the U.S. Embassy, looking for help from the military attache. Despite information implicating the armed forces in a massacre, he received a six-month visa.

In 2000 a Haitian court finally issued its verdict on Raboteau. Sixteen jailed soldiers and policemen were convicted, and another 37 were found guilty in absentia, including Valmond, Duperval and Dorelien. They were sentenced to life in prison with hard labor.

The Raboteau investigation became a landmark in Haitian judicial history. It remains one of few successfully prosecuted cases involving major political crimes. While not convicted of personally carrying out the massacre, the three senior officers were all found guilty of "command responsibility."

Despite the convictions, Valmond lived openly in Tampa's Haitian community, gossiping about island politics at a barbershop near Busch Boulevard. He made no attempt to hide his past. One of the first things visitors to his home saw was a large portrait of him in his Haitian army uniform.

The escape of the masterminds of Raboteau could also have wider implications, say analysts, adding a potentially destabilizing ingredient to the already chaotic scenario facing the U.S.-led multinational force. Among the escapees are several other military officers with unsavory records, notably former military dictator Gen. Prosper Avril, who was convicted for his role in another massacre.

Leaders of a rebel army that stormed into Port-au-Prince the day after Aristide's departure have already announced their intention to campaign for the re-establishment of the Armed Forces. Many of its members are former military officers, including some who are wanted criminals.

Ironically, the armed rebellion broke out Feb. 5 in the Raboteau slum where the massacre occurred. As a sign of Aristide's loss of support in recent years, the leaders of the uprising included men accused of involvement in the massacre, as well as some survivors.

The whereabouts of the escaped officers are not known.

"I know where he is," Mrs. Valmond said Sunday, "but I am not going to tell anyone where he is."

She said her husband has no intention of leaving Haiti. "Where can he go?" she said. "It's his country."

Reporters from two Florida newspapers spent the last two days trying to find the missing men.

After escaping, Avril went directly to the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince to request asylum, but was turned down. After their escape, Valmond and Duperval phoned the offices of a local human rights group, to express their gratitude for visiting them in jail and checking on their conditions.

"(Valmond) just wanted to say thank you," said Yolene Gilles, program director for the National Coalition for Haitian Rights. She urged Haitian authorities to find the escaped convicts and put them back behind bars.

"I know it won't happen today," she said. "But they need to do so quickly."

- Times Latin America correspondent David Adams is in Haiti. Times staff writer Bill Duryea is in Tampa.

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