05-10-05, 12:00pm

Haiti’s constitutional Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was taken to Saint Marc on Friday, April 22, to appear before examining magistrate Clunie Pierre Jules on charges that he ordered an alleged massacre in La Scierie, a suburb of that city (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No. 16, 6/30/2004). Two other Lavalas government officials are accused of involvement in this supposed massacre, the disputed existence of which is championed primarily by the Haiti branch of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), a pro-coup “human rights” group.

One day earlier, Neptune had been transferred from the hospital of the Argentinian military base on the Airport Road to a private house in Pacot, which officials of the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) describe as an annex of the National Penitentiary.

The de facto authorities then woke up the ailing PM in the middle of the night and transported him to St. Marc at 4:00 a.m.. But the trip was in vain because the examining judge was not in her chambers to carry out his hearing, even if Neptune had wanted to answer her questions. In fact, Judge Pierre Jules did not even know that Neptune was being transported to Saint Marc.

The de facto authorities unilaterally organized the would-be hearing as a media show, in which the Haitian National Police (PNH) and MINUSTAH played prominent roles. The basic rights of the prisoner were trampled since, among other things, his lawyer was not even advised.

In the course of the night-time transfer, Neptune was severely beaten. Roused in the dead of night, Neptune “resisted and apparently even bit someone who hit him, and that's when they tortured him,” explained journalist Jean Jean-Pierre on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now on April 25. “They beat him up simply because that is traditionally the reaction of Haitian police.”

After being hospitalized by the UN last month, Neptune began a second hunger strike to protest his illegal incarceration and to demand his immediate release. 'I will take neither food nor liquid, and I will continue the strike until the de facto authorities and UN unconditionally release me or take part directly in my death,” Neptune warned in an April 20 statement.

Samuel Madistin, the lawyer of the victims of the alleged La Scierie “massacre,” deplored that Neptune was transported to Saint Marc without the examining magistrate being informed beforehand. Madistin said the de facto authorities were trying to prove to the public that Neptune was under their control, not the MINUSTAH’s.

Constitutional Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert and Deputy Amanus Mayette were also taken to Saint Marc to go before Judge Pierre Jules, under the same illegal conditions. But both said they had nothing to say to the examining magistrate. 'I answered no question concerning Scierie,” Mayette declared in a statement from the National Penitentiary where he is imprisoned. “I simply said that I did not have a lawyer... Wanting to lynch me in the media will not have any effect on me, but will be only used to make you servants of shame and lowness and to reduce to you to a sub-human state.'

Privert’s wife said that her husband, who was taken to St. Marc very early in the morning of Monday, April 18, only made a statement asking the judge to take note that he was brought to Saint Marc in an illegal manner and without the presence of his lawyer. Privert was then taken back to his Canape-Vert hospital room in Port-with-Prince, where he receives medical care following the deterioration of his health due to his justice-seeking hunger strike.

In reviewing the facts of La Scierie, the United Nations independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, recently said that deaths resulted not from a massacre, but a confrontation between rival armed bands in Saint Marc on the eve of President Aristide’s kidnapping in February 2004.