UN accuses Haiti of massive illegal detentions

[cal04]

The head of the U.N. mission's human rights unit in Haiti accused judicial officials and the U.S.-backed interim government on Thursday of illegally detaining most of the 4,000 people behind bars in the country. Thierry Fagart said most of the inmates had not been formally charged or put on trial by the interim authorities who replaced ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide two years ago. "Most of the people in jail in Haiti are being detained illegally. The legal procedures have been systematically violated," said Fagart. Fagart said many of the detainees, particularly high-profile prisoners, should be released immediately while investigations and other judicial proceedings continue.

He said the decision by authorities in the impoverished Caribbean country to hold people "preventively" behind bars, for months or years, often without charges filed against them, was unacceptable. "There are people who have in preventive detention more time than provided by the law if they were sentenced," Fagart told Reuters. He urged the interim authorities, who are due to hand power to President-elect Rene Preval next month, to comply with the principle of presumption of innocence. "If they are found not guilty when tried, they will have spent all that time in jail for no reason," he said.

Hundreds of those jailed are widely believed to have been arrested for political reasons, although the interim government has repeatedly denied that. Among them are former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, both of whom served under Aristide. Haiti's prisons are overflowing and cannot accommodate new inmates. At the national penitentiary where more than 2,000 people are jailed, only about 4 percent have been sentenced. Officials at the prison, built to house only a few hundred, have refused over the past week to take in new suspects sent by the Haitian police and other judicial authorities because of lack of space.

Virtually all the prisoners were arrested over the past two years under the interim government because Haiti's prisons were emptied during or right after the armed rebellion that toppled Aristide in February 2004. Privert marked his second anniversary in jail on Thursday. He was arrested on April 6, 2004, on accusations he and Neptune masterminded what their political foes have called a massacre two months earlier in La Scierie, a village near the northern town of St-Marc. Both men have denied the accusations. Preval, who won an election in February, has suggested he could issue a pardon to political prisoners. Many of them say they have done nothing they need to be pardoned for.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060406/wl_nm/rights_haiti_dc

[chill_wind]

1. Sounds familiar

"US backed interim government.."

Figures accordingly in these times.

Here's how we do it in the United States.

Very depressing stuff for human rights there...and here..

Slandered by “Special Interest”

Immediately after 9-11, the U.S. government questioned thousands of noncitizens of Arab and south Asian descent who were selected for no reason other than their ethnic or religious backgrounds. A full 752 were arrested for routine immigration violations. While none was ever charged with terrorism, the government gave them the slanderous moniker of being of “special interest” to the terrorism investigation.

The special-interest detainees were subjected to secret immigration hearings where even their families were excluded. All endured periods of detention without charge. Thirty-six were held for 28 days or more, 13 were held for more than 40 days, and nine were held for more than 50 days—all without charge. One Saudi Arabian detainee was held for 119 days.

While detainees at one detention center in Brooklyn waited, correction officers slammed them against walls, causing pain and injuries. Other detainees had their fingers and wrists painfully twisted, or their restraints pulled to harm their legs and arms or to trip them so that they fell to the floor.

But even after they were charged with routine immigration violations (such as overstaying a visa) and ordered deported, the government continued to investigate them and to keep them jailed until it concluded they were not of interest. The government’s assumption was that these noncitizens might be somehow linked to the 9-11 attacks. They were not. The special-interest detainees were treated like serious criminals when the worst they were ever charged with were run-of-the mill immigration violations.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/10/01/usdom10493.htm

Depressing to ponder how we've been doing this kind of detention without rights thing for a good long time...
Though I imagine the numbers under the BA have climbed and will climb higher yet.

Children's Rights Advocate at Human Rights Watch
Detained and Deprived of Rights
Report,
December 22, 1998

In a new report released today, Human Rights Watch charges the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with violating the rights of unaccompanied children in its custody. The report finds that roughly one-third of detained children are held in punitive, jail-like detention centers, even though most children in INS custody are being detained for administrative reasons while their case is pending, not as a punishment for criminal behavior. Approximately 5000 unaccompanied children are detained by the INS each year.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/1998/12/22/usdom1454.htm

[bullimiami]

2. u.n. be ashamed. be very ashamed.

you let bush and some french speaking cronies launch a coup and destroy haitis democracy.

the un is complicit in this disaster. they did nothing to stop it.

[MrPrax]

3. Glad you mentioned...

The nerve of the UN--they have been directly complicit in the both the coup and the oppression since the coup.

You know if you think about it, the UN has a less than spectacular record on pretty much everything...useless really.