27409: Hermantin(News)Ailing priest vows to return to Haiti to clear name in alleged ki (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Lhermantin@hotmail.com




Ailing priest vows to return to Haiti to clear name in alleged killings


Acting prime minister, freed priest defend their political views



By Alva James-Johnson
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

January 31, 2006



Haiti's turbulent political clouds hovered over South Florida on Monday, as an 
ailing priest in a Miami hospital bed vowed to clear his name and the nation's 
interim prime minister defended his leadership from his Boca Raton home.

The Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, the priest released Sunday from a Haitian prison 
for medical treatment in Miami, was anxious to return to the Caribbean country 
to fight for justice, a spokeswoman said after visiting him in the hospital 
Monday.

"The first thing that came out of his mouth was, `How long am I going to be 
here?'" said Lucie Tondreau, a community activist who has worked with 
Jean-Juste for 21 years.

"He wants to go back to Haiti ... What we want and what he wants is for him to 
be freed from all charges against him," Tondreau said.

But doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital still were conducting tests and 
treating the priest for leukemia and pneumonia, Tondreau said, and it was 
uncertain when he would be released.

She said some supporters hope Jean-Juste, a former Miami activist, remains in 
South Florida until after a new Haitian government is elected Feb. 7, assuming 
the election is not postponed again.

She said supporters would continue their calls for justice until then, and a 
group planned to picket at the Boca Raton home of Gerard Latortue, the interim 
Haitian prime minister.

"We are going to continue the struggle in order to call for all the political 
prisoners in Haiti to be released," she said.

Jean-Juste, a strong supporter of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and 
his Lavalas political party, had been in prison since July on suspicion of 
involvement in the killing of prominent journalist and poet Jacques Roche. A 
judge has cleared him of homicide but he has been indicted on weapons 
possession and criminal conspiracy, charges he denies.

His imprisonment in October 2004 was widely condemned by humanitarian 
organizations, members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus and activists 
around the world.

Some Lavalas Party members had hoped he would be the next president.

But Interim Prime Minister Latortue, who was also in South Florida on Monday, 
dismissed the claims that Jean-Juste and other Lavalas Party members are 
political prisoners. He said Jean-Juste is in Miami because the interim 
government arranged for him to be treated abroad.

"We're not like the previous government," he said, referring to the Aristide 
regime, which was ousted in 2004. "This government is concerned with human 
rights and respects the rights of everybody regardless of if they're in jail."

Lesly Jacques, director of a popular Haitian radio station in Boca Raton, 
praised the interim government for the "humanitarian gesture," but stressed 
that the priest should return to Haiti for trial.

"People want to make it look like he's a political prisoner, but he's not," 
Jacques said.

"He was arrested because he's accused of killing a journalist in Haiti ... He 
should, once he's feeling better, go back to Haiti and face the accusations 
against him."

Alva James-Johnson can be reached at ajjohnson@sun-sentinel.com or 
954-356-4523.


Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel