Posted at 12:15 p.m., June 27, 2001

Forty-one people killed in Haiti's bus crash 

The death toll in Tuesday's bus crash near the town of Cavaillon, about 120 miles west of Haiti's capital city of Port-au-Prince, has risen to 41.                                                                                                                                                                                                We previously reported that 19 people, including three judges, were killed, but those were killed after the overcrowded bus traveling to Port-au-Prince from the provincial city of Les Cayes hit an abandoned truck and overturned.                                                                                                                                                                                            

U.S. Coast Guard tells 183 Haitian boat people you don't belong in the U.S.                                                                                                                                                                                                   It was Haiti's dehumanizing poverty and radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide's dictatorship that forced 183 Haitians to flee Haiti, hoping to illegally enter Florida.                                                                                                                                                                                                The boat people, whose 40-foot wooden sailboat was intercepted late Sunday morning by the U.S. Coast Guard, 25 miles west of Great Inagua, in the Bahamas, were all returned to Haiti Tuesday.                                                                                                                                                                                             "Aristide is not helping us. We are hungry. As long as there is no work in this country. As long as abject poverty continues to be the order of the day we will again try to go to Miami," many of the repatriated Haitians said Tuesday in the trash-filled, the environmental-treat capital city of Port-au-Prince.                                                                                                                                                                                              

U.S. Haiti's Ambassador tells radical leftist Aristide "no more burning of opponents alive"                                                                                                                                                                                                        More than a week after radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide told supporters to burn alive alleged car thieves, for example, the U.S. Ambassador, Brian Dean Curran, in Haiti, Tuesday in an interview with private Radio Metropole ordered him to stop such barbaric practice.                                                                                                                                                                                                   "For example, six people have since been burned alive. Three in the town of Cabaret and three in the city of Petit-Goave. You cannot replace illegality with illegality," said Ambassador Curran.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Posted at 4:49 p.m., Tuesday, June 26, 2001

A bus crash that costs at least 19 Haitians their lives

An overcrowded bus traveling to the capital city of Port-au-Prince from the provincial city of Les Cayes collided after hiting a parked truck and overturned near the town of Cavaillon, about 120 miles, west of Port-au-Prince, early Tuesday.                                                                                                                                                                                                At least 19 people, including three judges, were killed and several others badly injured.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

11 Haitian migrants perish in Bahamian waters                                                                                                                                                                                                A flimsy boat with more than 90 Haitian migrants, including 68 men and eight women, on board capsized early on Sunday morning after hitting a reef and split in half off Rum Cay in the Bahamas.                                                                                                                                                                                             Eleven of the migrants who apparently were en route to the U.S. died, and three of the victims' bodies are believed to have been consumed by sharks since their 30-foot (nine-metre) boat went aground in shark-infested waters.                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Radical leftist Aristide postpones setting up fraudulent electoral council as fired judges accuse de facto Justice Minister of behaving like a tyrant; many burn alive in Haiti                                                                                                                                                                                                 Haiti's radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who not long ago was ordered by the Organization of American States (O.A.S.) to form a new electoral council, replacing the current, but largely discredited one, because it held a series of fraudulent elections last year, Monday postponed the formation of the new electoral body, hopping that members of the democratic opposition will agree to be represented on the new board.                                                                                                                                                                                                But members of the democratic opposition, better known as the Convergence Democratique, which continues to call for new, but general elections, seem to have turned a dead ear to radical leftist Aristide's offer to join the new electoral board.                                                                                                                                                                                             Many Haitians are convinced that the tyrant will have problems holding new elections for seven senate seats, which his Lavalas Family Party claimed to have won last year.                                                                                                                                                                                                  In another development, two judges, including Jean Senat Fleury who first was assigned a prominent radio journalist murder case, were dismissed from their jobs Tuesday by Haiti's de facto Justice Minister Gary Lissade, who accused the former judges of demanding $1 million from drug dealers in exchange for their freedom.                                                                                                                                                                                                The fired judges, who took to the airwaves Tuesday, accused Lissade of behaving like a dictator, a corrupt man, and they also said no one can dismiss them from their posts and they still consider themselves as judges.                                                                                                                                                                                            Reynold Georges, a prominent attorney for the kidnapped former brutal Haitian military dictator Prosper Avril, who continues to languish in a jail cell since he was kidnapped last month by six radical leftist Aristide's hooded Lavalas police or bandits while he was signing his new book, "The Black Book of Insecurity," in the upper-class Port-au-Prince suburb of Petion-Ville, sided with the judges who now figure among the estimated 85% Haitians who are either unemployed or underemployed.                                                                                                                                                                                             "Before Lissade can say he fires a judge for soliciting money from drug dealers in exchange for their liberty first he has to take out of the circulation Dany Toussaint," said Georges Tuesday.                                                                                                                                                                                           Toussaint is a well known drug Baron and members of radical leftist Aristide's Lavalas Party. He has been named in a sealed indictment for the brutal murder of prominent radio journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique, who was shot to death in the early morning of April 3, 2000.                                                                                                                                                                                              Claudy Gassant, the judge in the case, fled Haiti nearly two weeks ago after learning that Toussaint convened a meeting late June 6 and ordered his assassins to kill him.                                                                                                                                                                                             Gassant, who returned to Haiti Monday, has indicated the murder case is too complex for him, and he has no intention of continuing with it, suggesting that Toussaint, who claims parliamentary immunity, will continue to kill.                                                                                                                                                                                                       Also, since last Wednesday, when radical leftist Aristide urged supporters to burn alive, to hack to death citizens said to be car thieves, for example, more than 50 Haitians have been hacked to death, sprayed with gasoline and then burn alive in many provincial cities, which include Petit-Goave.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Posted at 1:59 a.m., Tuesday, June 26, 2001

New YORK - In ranging endorsement of "justice for all," the U.S. Supreme Court today affirmed the right of legal immigrants to have their cases reviewed by a court before facing deportation and said that a 1996 law making deportation automatic for an expanded group of immigrants could not applied retroactively.                                                                                                                                                                                           "Today's ruling preserves the fundamental principle that no matter who you are, you are entitled to your day in court under our system of justice," said Lucas Guttengag, Director of the ACLU's Immigrants Rights Projects, who argued the matter before the Justices in April.                                                                                                                                                                                                  "In particular, this ruling ends the nightmare of thousands of immigrants families who were facing deportation of loved ones, in many cases for minor crimes that were committed many years ago and that did not even include jail time," he added.                                                                                                                                                                                                 The case arose out of 1996 anti-immigrant laws that required the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to deport even lawful permanent residents who committed minor criminal offenses, many of which carried no jail time time and for which they had long ago paid their debt to society.                                                                                                                                                                                                  In some cases, an immigrant may have pleaded guilty to a crime for which he was advised there would be no adverse immigration consequences.                                                                                                                                                                                                The Attorney General argued that the 1996 laws stripped federal courts of their powers to review such cases and said that the laws could be applied retroactively.                                                                                                                                                                                                 In a 5-4 decision, the Court today rejected that view.                                                                                                                                                                                             Writing for the majority, justice John Paul Stevens said that legal immigrants who pleaded guilty under the old law "almost certainly relied" on their right to a court review in deciding whether to forgo their rights to a trial. The "elimination of any possibility of relief ... has an obvious and severe retroactive effect," he wrote.                                                                                                                                                                                               While the Supreme Court today acted to ameliorate some of the harshest elements of the 1996 ant-immigrant legislation, the ACLU said that Congress now needs to finish the job.                                                                                                                                                                                             "Today's decision rejects the Attorney General's harsh interpretation of the 1996 laws but does not address other equally harsh provisions that Congress should now reconsider," said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Council.                                                                                                                                                                                               "These include mandatory detention of lawful permanent residents and restoring discretion to immigration judges for cases in the future," he added.                                                                                                                                                                                                 The cases are Calcano-Martinez v. INS, No. 001011, and INS v St. Cyr, No. 00-767. An ACLU special feature on the immigration cases, including stories of the families affected, is online at htt://www.aclu.org/features/f042401a.html.

                                                                                                                                                                                         What else should you know about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling?                                                                                                                                                                                                   St. Cyr's biography                                                                                                                                                                                             Enrico St. Cyr, 34, whose case (INS v St. Cyr, No. 00-767) became the vehicle for the high court's ruling, is a former Bridgeport, Conn. resident who was admitted to the United States from Haiti in 1986 as a lawful permanent resident alien. In 1996, he was arrested for selling $75 worth of cocaine. On March 8 of that year, he entered a guilty plea in state court to a charge of selling a controlled substance in violation of Connecticut law. He was then sentenced to five years in prison. Upon his release in 1999 from prison, where he earned a general equivalency diploma (GED), he was immediately taken out of the circulation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which on April 10, 1997 began deportation proceedings against him. He has since been a resident of the Hartford Correctional Center.

In addition to Lucas Guttentag, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Immigrants' Rights Project, who April argued before the Justices in favor of amending the 1996 immigration laws that went into effect in 1997, causing thousands of legal immigrants who had run afoul of the law, often in minor ways, such as shoplifting, to face certain deportation, was Springfield, MA. Attorney Michael More.                                                                                                                                                                                               Atty. More, who has a one-person law practice at 20 Mapple St., in Springfield, was hired by St. Cyr for his case after teaching a law course in the prison, where the defendant is still being held, for Asnuntuck Community College.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             The 1996 Immigration Laws                                                                                                                                                                                                 One of the complex laws, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, specified a broad range of offenses for which immigrants would be ineligible to seek a waiver of deportation, a discretionary form of administrative relief that had frequently been granted to deportable aliens with ties in this country or with a minor offense marring an otherwise good record. Under the old immigration law more than half a waiver of deportation was granted to half of the people who applied. This law also restricted judicial review for aliens taken out of the circulation for various reasons.                                                                                                                                                                                                The second law, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, also complex. This law provided that no court shall have jurisdiction to review any final order of removal for aliens, including those who have been lawfully admitted into the U.S., who had committed any of various crimes in the United States. 

They were Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Bryer.

They were Justices Sandra Day O'Oconnor, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.                                                                                                                                                                                               

Posted at 12:10 p.m., Friday, June 22, 2001

INS agents nab alleged Haitian human rights abuser                                                                                                                                                                                                  Carl Dorelien, a former Haitian Army colonel who is said to have participated in the 1991 military coup d'etat that sent radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile for more than three years was arrested Thursday in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where he has lived in exile since fleeing Haiti in 1994, when Aristide resumed the presidency of Haiti after more than 20,000 U.S. troops landed there, said U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Rodney Germain.                                                                                                                                                                                                He has long been accused of gross human rights violations, and these during his tenure as a member of the military junta that governed Haiti by proxy in the early 1990s.                                                                                                                                                                                          Dorelien who won $3.2 million in the Florida state lottery in 1997 attempted to avoid arrest by sneaking out the back of his private residence, but unfortunately INS agents were there, too, waiting to grab him. He was then taken to Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County for deportation proceedings, said U.S. Miami immigration spokesperson Germain.                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Posted at 2:35 a.m., Thursday, June 21, 2001

Radical leftist and grossly incompetent Aristide tells supporters to burn alleged bandits alive                                                                                                                                                                                                 In democratic or civilized countries, the courts determine violations of the laws and order remedies or penalties for these violations. But not so in Haiti, where radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide long ago instituted the dictatorship of the proletariat.                                                                                                                                                                                                                Such were the words of tyrant Aristide Wednesday when he visited a few police stations in the trash-filled capital city of Port-au-Prince in an effort to reduce Haiti's unacceptable crime rate, he said in an interview. "If someone forces a driver out of his or her car that means he or she is a criminal, a bandit. If someone is robbing someone else that means he or she is a criminal. There is no need for you to wait for the police to arrive and arrest him or her, which will then be followed by an appearance before a judge. Forget about it I say! Forget about it I say! He or she is guilty. All you have to do is burning him or her alive, kill him or her right on the spot."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       But what the grossly incompetent Artistide completely forgot or did not know is that, according to many Haitians, only reducing the country's estimated unemployment rate of 80 per cent, disarming his bandits, providing electricity for citizens more than one hour a day and educating his fellow Haitians about the effect or multiplying effect of crime, to name only these ones, will (hopefully) be the answer to this social problem that Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, started to experience shortly after he first assumed the presidency in 1991. Having nothing at all to do because he is so incompetent and visiting police stations or demagogy is far from being the answer.                                                                                                                                                                                                    In fact, we learned Lavalas Police has executed only this month more than 300 hearsay Haitian criminals, and this on the order of radical leftist Aristide.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Posted at 3:37 a.m., Wednesday, June 20, 2001

Man, his secretary on trial in New Orleans for newlywed wife's brutal murder in Haiti                                                                                                                                                                                                Even before Curtis Wharton, 38, a New Orleans insurance salesman, went to Haiti with his newlywed wife, 28-year-old Sheila Webb-Wharton, last January, he had something else on mind other than vacationing and looking for business opportunities in the Western Hemisphere poorest country.                                                                                                                                                                                                He would soon become a great many times a millionaire. But, that would only be possible first by plotting with his secretary Judy Nipper, 53, to have his wife brutally murdered in the crime infested Caribbean nation.                                                                                                                                                                                              After his wife body was found on a Haitian coastal road last January, Wharton told Haitian Lavalas Police that two armed motorcyclists forced him and his "bird of paradise," as he used to call his wife, according to people close to them, off the highway, then shot her before taking off in their rental vehicle.                                                                                                                                                                                                 But in indictments unsealed not long ago by U.S. authorities, the charges against Wharton said he had a U.S. citizen (his wife) murdered on foreign soil four months after his marriage to her, but first considered faking her death, so he could in turn collect $2.8 million in life insurance policy. Nipper herself was accused of complicity.                                                                                                                                                                                           Wharton, who is now on trial in a New Orleans U.S. Federal Court, denies any involvement in the murder of his wife. So does Nipper who will be tried after Wharton, U.S. Judge Don Walter said Monday. Both will be incarcerated for life if they are found guilty by an eight-man, four-woman jury that was selected Tuesday by attorneys, but not before nearly 100 witnesses testify.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Judge who flees troubled Haiti for his life might return there to unseal indictments in prominent radio journalist murder case                                                                                                                                                                                         Nothing in Jean Leopold Dominique's journey in politics and journalism suggested that he would be assassinated under the regime of Rene Preval, which called itself a "democratic government."                                                                                                                                                                                                           But Dominique who was arrested more than once by previous governments - which chief bandit Jean-Betrand Aristide and his political godson Preval called dictatorial, brutal and criminal - only to then be forced into exile was brutally murdered in the early morning of April 3, 2000 in the front yard of his Haiti-inter radio station in the trash-filled capital city of Port-au-Prince.                                                                                                                                                                                            Under pressure from international human rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders, judge Claudy Gassant, who last year was assigned the murder case after judge Jean Fleury Senat recused himself because of death threats, fled Haiti Saturday for his life after learning that a death contract was being put on his head by Dany Toussaint, a well known drug baron, a de facto Senator and one of those indicted.                                                                                                                                                                                                   "I will return to Haiti from Miami to proceed with the complex murder case only if I am provided with full security," he told Haiti's de facto Justice Minister Gary Lissade Tuesday by telephone from his involuntary exile in Miami.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Radical leftist Aristide's Lavalas police or bandits murder opposition supporters                                                                                                                                                                                                       A prominent member of Haiti's democratic opposition, better known as the Convergence Democratique, Evans Paul, also a former mayor of Port-au-Prince, Tuesday blasted radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide, accusing him of kidnapping many of his supporters.                                                                                                                                                                                              "The families of many of my supporters brought them food in jail and they were told by police to no longer count them as their sons, they are dead, go back home and give birth to other sons," Paul said in a radio interview.                                                                                                                                                                                           

Former Dominican Prime Minister says radical leftist Aristide does not want to help find a solution to Haiti's long political problem                                                                                                                                                                                           Dame Eugenia Charles, a former Prime Minister of Dominica, who arrived in Haiti Tuesday, accused radical leftist Aristide of having no interest at all in helping find a solution to the long Haitian political crisis, which began after a series of largely fraudulent elections were held last year, benefiting only his Lavalas Family Party. Many Haitians now call it the party of death.                                                                                                                                                                                                 Added Prime Minister Charles, "All he, Aristide, is interested in is having international financial institutions resume their economic assistance to Haiti."                                                                                                                                                                                                  

More than 50 hack to death, burn alive in Haiti; more than 200 houses burn to the ground there, too                                                                                                                                                                                           Fights between many groups of citizens, bandits - most of them armed with machetes and guns - over land and radical leftist de facto government officials trying to extort money from dirt poor citizens resulted in more than 50 deaths this week in the Port-au-Prince slums of Carrefour-Feuilles and Fort Mercredi. More than 200 houses, including huts, were burned to the ground. No one was arrested because police officers did not intervene, fearing for their lives.                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Posted at 8:30 p.m., Monday, June 18, 2001

Haitian judge flees home country for his life                                                                                                                                                                                         Fearing for his life after a contract to murder him was entered into between Dany Toussaint, a de facto Senator and senior member of radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Party, and some hit-men, Claudy Gassant, a Haitian judge investigating the April 3, 2000 brutal murder of prominent Haitian radio journalist Jean Leopold Dominique fled Haiti for Miami Saturday.                                                                                                                                                                                            Gassant submitted his letter of resignation to Haiti's de facto Minister of Justice Gary Lissade Wednesday, but he officially resigned Friday.                                                                                                                                                                                              One of the persons known to have been indicted for the murder of Dominique is Toussaint. Approximately two weeks ago, he was on three different occasions summoned to appear in the judge's courtroom. He refused to do so, claiming parliamentary immunity. For details, see article below.                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Posted at 12:49 p.m., Monday, June 18, 2001

Young Haitian man guns down in Miami's little Haiti section                                                                                                                                                                                              Dudley Francois, 20, could have become a lawyer, for example. But on Saturday one of the four black males who were in a blue Toyota automobile jumped out and shot him several times, suggesting that his parents could no longer dream of a proud son.                                                                                                                                                                                       According to Miami Police Lt. Bill Schwartz, Francois was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he died, from the front of a house, where he was standing when he was fatally shot, near the intersection of Northwest 59th Street and North Miami Ave in Little Haiti, Miami.                                                                                                                                                                                                  "We have no clues as to what prompted the shooting. Anyone with relevant information should call police at 305-579-6420," said Lt. Schwartz.                                                                                                                                                                                           

Posted at 3:10 p.m., Thursday, June 14 2001

Haitian immigrant denies role in robbery, murder                                                                                                                                                                                             Jean Joseph, a young Haitian immigrant told a Nashville, Tennessee jury Wednesday that he had not participated in the planning of a robbery that took the life of a businessman, Gholam Ali Soheilinia, who had sold him a car on the afternoon of Sept.10, 1999.                                                                                                                                                                                             On the afternoon of Sept.10, 1999, he agreed to give Deandre Sweeney and Lazarus Spencer, both 18, a ride home from Jere Baxter Alternative School, where he, too, was a student. Sweeney, a convicted car thief, then invited Phillip Howard White Jr., whom he met for the first time, Joseph told a jury in heavily accented English. As he was driving, but first to United Imports at 705 51st Ave. N., where he needed to make a car payment, there was a lot of talk, but he did not understand much of it.                                                                                                                                                                                          Joseph further told the jury that he even feared for his life, thinking that the three passengers in his car would rob him before he arrived at the car dealer. He knew nothing at all about the gun that White Jr. used to rob and shoot to death businessman Soheilinia on the afternoon of Sept.10, 1999.                                                                                                                                                                                      However, his two classmates contradicted his version of the the Sept.10, 1999 afternoon robbery and murder. "That's not true at all. He took an active role in planning the robbery. He was the person who provided the gun that Phillip Howard White Jr., used to rob and shoot to death Soheilinia."                                                                                                                                                                                             White and Joseph will automatically be confined for life in a penitentiary if a felony murder verdict is returned against them by the jury, which Judge Cheryl Blackburn Wednesday sent home for the night before Joseph could complete his testimony. He is due back on the witness stand Thursday at 10 a.m.                                                                                                                                                                                                In another development, the 1996 car theft and vandalism convictions of a Boston's Haitian man was reversed Monday by the Massachusetts Appeals Court, sending the case back to Somerville District Court, where the guilty verdicts were returned against Icarfens Hillaire who was then only 17.