Sent 9/29/05, by email
Mr. Philip Alston
Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions
c/o OHCHR-UNOG,
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Re: Follow up on Letter of Allegation - Police Massacres in Haiti, August 20 and 21, 2005
Dear Mr. Alston:
As announced in our Letter of Allegation of August 24, 2005, regarding the incidents of August 20 and 21, 2005, in the Port-au-Prince neighborhoods of Martissant and Grande Ravine, we would like to follow up on some of the information provided in the initial letter and provide additional and more detailed information on the two incidents as well as the names of some of the victims and specifics of their cases, to the degree as they or their families consented that we reveal their identity.
Additional information regarding the Football Match Massacre on Saturday August 20, 2005
Additional information regarding the incident;
The terrain of the soccer match at Sainte-Bernadette/Ecole Mère Rose is located between Rue Sainte-Bernadette and Martissant 1 off of Route Nationale #2. A police station is located directly west of the terrain on the western edge of Martissant 1. To the direct south of the terrain, there is a small neighborhood with residential homes called Cité Macoute. In front of the main entrance to the stadium, there is a courtyard referred to as “Lakou Perou”.
The police entered the stadium at approximately 6:30 pm at the beginning of the second half of the soccer match. Witnesses describe a state of general panic following the first shooting. It could not been finally determined whether the first shot was fired by police or whether it was fired by a civilian as an alert for certain individuals to flee the stadium. Many spectators obeyed police orders to lie down while others tried to flee by going over the wall of the stadium. Many people tried to go up a row of concrete stairs under construction for a basketball court. Several individuals who had watched the match from the top of the Mère Rose school building jumped from the upper level to the lower level and then to the ground several feet below. Several persons are reported to have sustained injuries in the fall. Witnesses inside of the stadium during this action described hearing shooting from the outer courtyard of the stadium.
Many of persons fleeing the stadium found individuals with machetes waiting for them on the other side of the walls. Several persons are said to have been struck by these individuals as they tried to flee.
After the initial shooting, individuals who had stayed inside the stadium were forced by the police to leave the terrain one at a time with hands over their head. The civilians armed with machetes proceeded to inspect each person. Some individuals were singled out and attacked by the armed civilians, others were seized by the police and shot, some sustained both machete blows and bullet wounds. Police are also reported to have gone house to house in the area surrounding the terrain to look for persons hiding there.
One witness, F.E., reports that he fled the stadium over a barbed-wired wall and hid in a small house from where he heard yells and the sound of machete blows. He further recalls that when he left his hideout, he counted 13 bodies on the ground. Among the civilians armed with machetes, he identified Gerald Gwolombril (alias), Roudy, Choupit (alias), Dias (alias) and Eliphete (see list of alleged perpetrators with full names - where available - below). The group saw him when he tried to sneak away. They first tried to force the witness to join in the killings. When he refused, they threatened to kill him, but let him go in the end upon the intervention of Roudy.
Eyewitness Brunete Esterne, who agreed to have his full name revealed in this report, reports that the police fired both from within and from outside the stadium. He also reports that some of the civilians armed with machetes also went inside the stadium, among them Gerald Gwolombril. In the general panic, he received a machete wound to his finger. He tried to intervene when police officers proceeded to arrest a teenager in the stadium near the main gate which provoked a police officer to hit him in the stomach with his weapon. The teenager is believed to have been set free later. Along with many others, the witness Brunete Esterne exited the stadium gate his hands over his head. Outside the stadium, the witness observed three cadavers, two in the area of the Lakou Perou and one on route Martissant 1.
Additional information regarding the victims of the incident;
The families of the following victims who died at the 20 August soccer match have so far decided to step forward and file a criminal complaint with the Haitian judiciary and thus consented to reveal the identity of their family members killed
1. D enis Jean Mary (alias Ti Blanc) , a 17 year old student at the Lycée Toussaint in Port-au-Prince. His sister, who attended the match with her brother, reports that police arrested Denis Jean Mary outside the stadium in Rue St. Bernadette. The family subsequently searched for him at the area commissariats, but could not find him anywhere. They then went to look for him at the General State University Hospital (l’Hôpital Générale de l’Université de l’Etat d’Haïti - HUEH) . They finally found his body at the hospital morgue. According to the findings of Justice of Peace Amboise, who examined the body on August 24, 2005, Denis Jean Mary received a bullet wound to his head and another bullet wound in his back. The family’s home in Grand Ravine was searched and pillaged (yet not burned) the next day during the August 21 raid by policemen and armed civilians.
2. Nesdou Fevry, 24 years old. Nesdou tried to escape the massacre by hiding in a house outside the stadium. When searching these houses, the police found Nesdou and made him exit the house with his hands up in the air. According to several witness accounts, the police subsequently released him, but handed him over to the armed civilians who subsequently attacked him with their machetes. After he was severely injured by machete blows, the police reportedly took hold of him again and shot him and placed his dead body in one of several police ambulances that were present at the scene since the beginning of the police raid. Nesdou’s family later found his body in the HUEH morgue with two bullet holes and machete wounds to his back and left arm (examination of the body by Justice of Peace Amboise on August 29).
3. Franky Erné, 20 years old. According to his family, Franky Erné was among the spectators of the soccer match. When he did not return home after the incident, his family started searching for him and finally discovered his body at the HUEH morgue. He received a bullet wound in the back, and his arm and fingers bear machete wounds. His face was severely swollen at the time that he was found. One witness reports that Franky Erné tried to flee the massacre by jumping inside a van (camionette), but that several civilians armed with machetes saw him and dragged him out of the van.
4. Erinel Alcidas , 23 years old. Erinel Alicidas attended the match in the company of this cousin who reports that Alcidas was sitting on a wall to watch the football match. He was first hit by a police bullet, which made him fall to the ground, and then attacked by civilians armed with machetes. His body, later found at the HUEH morgue, was severely mutilated.
Additional information regarding the alleged perpetrators;
Several police units are believed to have been sent for the August 20 operation at St. Bernadette. Approximately 15 cars, including at least three police ambulances are reported to have been present at the scene. Several testimonies implicate Commissaire Ifotar Gaspard alias “Blanc Ifotar” of the Direction Departmentale de l’Ouest Commissariat (DDO) as having directed the operation.
The civilians armed with machetes who were working directly with the police, belong to a group that is referred to as the “Lamè Ti Machet,” or the Small Machete Army. This group is comprised of several individuals working with the police as informal and irregular attachés.
Witnesses from Martissant identified individuals in this group as former residents of the neighborhood who had been implicated in violent crimes (murder, rape as well as extortion to the detriment of local merchants) and subsequently forced out of the zone by residents. Some of these individuals are part of a group led by Ti Junior, a gang leader killed in 2004. Several individuals in this group are prison escapees. The following names have resurfaced in several testimonies:
- Frantz Laramé, alias Gerald Gwolombril (prison escapee)
- Jean Yves alias Brown (prison escapee)
- Roudy Kernizan , alias Commandante Roudy
- Marck Spiegue, alias Ti Mak
- Stevenson Geffrard, alias Chas ou Dias
- Carlo Bernadel, alias Choupit
- Roland Toussaint
- Eliphète alias Tèt calé
- Kiki (alias)
Members of the group are believed to have moved to Carrefour in the area of Lamentin after having left the zone of Grand Ravine. Group members have also been repeatedly observed in Rue Champs de Mars in the downtown area where the group seems to have upheld a base or presence.
B. Attack onGrande Ravine Residential Neighborhood, Sunday August 21, 2005
Additional information regarding the incident;
Residents of Grand Ravine report that attackers split into two groups. One went up to the area of Sion, whereas another group, composed of eight policemen in black clothes and balaclavas and three civilians armed with machetes went to the area of Cité Jasmin, where they burned four homes.
It has so far not been possible to corroborate the reports of people killed during the raid on Sunday and to confirm the names of victims and their families.
Additional information regarding the victims of the incident;
Several families whose houses were pillaged and/or burned have agreed to reveal their identities and file criminal complaints against the perpetrators.
1. Brunete Esterne’s two-roomed home in Cité Jasmin # 7, where he lived with his wife and four children, was set on fire and the interior burned out completely. He saw the police and the three civilians armed with machetes approaching their house at around 10-11 o’clock in the morning and managed to flee with his family. He however observed the attack from a distance. The police first fired at the door to unlock it. While the policemen stood outside, the armed civilians entered the house and took out valuables which they carried to a red Nissan jeep. They then sat fire to the house.
2. Julesaint Mathieu is the owner and landlord of the two-roomed house in Cité Jasmin # 6, next to the house of Brunete Esterne. This house was equally pillaged, sat on fire and destroyed by the same group of police and armed civilians. She had rented the rooms to two tenant families, who lost all their belongings. One of the tenants, tailor Wilner Registre, had attended church with his wife and three children on the morning of August 21 only to return home to find his home in ashes. He lost, among other things his sewing machine and all his other work equipment.
3. Rosemonde Valet owned the house in Cité Jasmin # 25, where she lived with three of her children. She and her family also managed to flee up the hill before the attackers reached her house but she witnessed the attack from a place called Mur Marantha. She saw that the armed civilians first searched the house and took out money and valuables before setting the house on fire, while the police officers were standing and watching in front of the house.
4. The house of Délourde Joseph and her younger sister in Cité Jasmin # 4011 was pillaged and furniture was destroyed, but the house was not set on fire.
Additional information regarding the alleged perpetrators;
The three civilians in the group that burned the four homes in Cité Jasmin were identified by residents as Frantz Laramé, alias Gerald, Roudy and Eliphète. Whereas Roudy and Eliphète did not cover their faces, Frantz Laramé was first wearing a balaclava. The police officers are however reported to have pulled off his head cover at same point during the raid and to have declared that residents should see that he – a former resident of the zone – was now working for the police.
Additional Information Regarding Investigations
Both the Haitian National Police and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) have announced investigations into the massacre. The police have announced that five officers have been placed in custody.
As discussed in our complaint letter of August 24, past investigations into police killings in Haiti have been announced, but the reports have never been made public. As far as we know, not a single police officer has been prosecuted for criminal activities in the nineteen months that the Interim Government has ruled Haiti. MINUSTAH has not issued a single human rights report or the results of a single investigation in the sixteen months of its existence.
I urge you to take all possible measures to ensure that this series of police killings is denounced and stopped. I also urge you to ensure that the past killings are investigated and the perpetrators punished. We will supplement this letter as information becomes available, but in the meantime please contact us if you would like additional information.
Sincerely,
Brian Concannon Jr.
Director, Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
