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Bernard Gousse, whom Haitian President Michel Martelly nominated
for Prime Minister on Jul. 6, was so repressive, uncontrollable
and ineffective as Haiti’s de facto Justice Minister
seven years ago that Washington and its Haitian and
international allies forced his resignation, secret U.S. Embassy
cables show.
The cables were among a trove of 1,918
Haiti-related U.S. Embassy dispatches provided by the media
organization WikiLeaks to Haïti Liberté.
“He's an honest man. He has experience
in public administration,” Martelly’s chief of staff Thierry
Mayard-Paul told The Associated Press. “We believe that Mr.
Gousse can drive this country out of its turmoil.”
But the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince came
to a different conclusion towards the end of Gousse’s last
tenure as a public official, calling him a “complete failure”
as Justice Minister. In separate cables, the Embassy and its
interlocutors in Haiti decry his “mischief,” call him “stubborn,”
and question whether he is an “obstacle” to resolving the
case of a high-profile political prisoner.
“Everyone, including his backers in the
[Haitian] private sector, agreed that Gousse had been a complete
failure both on the security and justice fronts,” wrote then
U.S. Ambassador James Foley in a
Jun. 3, 2005 diplomatic cable.
Gousse’s nomination for premier already
seems doomed. On Jul. 8, 16 out of Haiti’s 30 Senators signed a
resolution saying they would not ratify him. The Senators, who
are likely to be joined by other parliamentarians, said in their
resolution that Gousse was unacceptable for the “repression,
arbitrary arrests and killings in the neighborhoods of
Port-au-Prince” that were carried out under his auspices in
2004 and 2005.
Gousse is similar to François “Papa Doc”
Duvalier in that he represents a sector of Haiti’s ruling class
which is so reactionary that it sometimes has conflict with
Washington. This sector traces its ideological roots back to
President Dumarsais Estimé (1946-50) and comprises other
right-wing ideologues and spokesmen such as Col. Himmler Rébu,
former “rebel” leader Guy Philippe, and even Michel Martelly.
Its representatives often strike a faux-nationalist posture,
citing “Haitian sovereignty” when pressured by the U.S.
to adopt certain democratic façades or bow to anti-corruption
measures and other imperial oversight. “While they adopt
nationalist rhetoric, we know they are protected by and allied
with the foreign military occupation of Haiti,” said Ben
Dupuy of the progressive National Popular Assembly (APN) in 1997
in summarizing this sector’s nature.
So, it was not so much Gousse’s brutality
that alienated the U.S. and its allies, but his refusal (at
least in actions) to operate under the command of the UN
occupation force – known as MINUSTAH – which Washington set in
place to oversee Haiti after the Feb. 29, 2004 coup against
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
For example, on Feb. 28, 2005, Gousse
deployed the Haitian police to repress a demonstration in Belair
marking the one-year anniversary of the coup, killing at least
six protestors and wounding many more. MINUSTAH’s Brazilian
military commander Lt. Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro complained to
the Associated Press the next day that the police killings “had
poisoned an atmosphere that peacekeepers had been working to
improve for two months,” and that now MINUSTAH was “being
received with a completely different attitude” by the
population.
Heleno was seconded on Mar. 4 by MINUSTAH’s
civilian chief Juan Gabriel Valdes who told the Miami Herald
that "we cannot tolerate executions, we can't tolerate
shooting out of control, we will not permit human rights abuses,"
promising that "U.N. peacekeepers will intervene -- and use
force if necessary -- if Haitian police attack unarmed civilians
again.”
UN officials were also complaining to the
U.S. Embassy. The UN’s CIVPOL (Civilian Police) Canadian
commissioner David Beer told the Embassy’s political officer
that “his plans for HNP [Haitian National Police] deployment
along with CIVPOL have been stymied for months,” according
to a secret
Jun. 7, 2005 cable. Gousse effectively headed the
police, and “despite professed agreement by the HNP, [...]
the plan has not been put into practice.”
Beer also “insisted that the Crowd
Control Unit (CIMO) not be deployed without a CIVPOL escort, but
the agreement is often ignored in practice,” as occurred
during the fateful Feb. 28, 2005 demonstration.
“There are still incidents, Beer
claimed, where Minister of Justice Gousse sends CIMO out on his
direct order, circumventing Beer's controls,” the cable
reported. “Beer said the May 22 [2005] incident in Bel Aire
[sic] in which a SWAT officer was killed was an example of
Gousse's mischief.”
Another case of UN dissatisfaction with
Gousse is outlined in a
Jun. 9, 2005 cable where MINUSTAH’s
elections chief Gérard Le Chevallier complained about the
Justice Minister’s tampering with a foreign-drafted document
that the UN was trying to pass off as Haitian. “LeChevallier
complained June 1 that the draft [election] decree, which was
submitted by the [Haitian Provisional Electoral Council] CEP
(ghostwritten by MINUSTAH) several weeks ago, has been held up
in the Council of Ministers by Justice Minister Gousse, who has
been insisting on what LeChevallier called ‘unhelpful changes,’”
the cable says.
The UN and U.S. also worried that Gousse
was giving them a black-eye by holding many high-profile figures
from Aristide’s government and Lavalas Family party as uncharged
and untried political prisoners.
Gousse suggested that Father Gérard Jean-Juste,
a pacifist Catholic priest with close ties to Aristide’s party,
had “engaged in terrorist acts” when the regime placed
him in prison, reported Haïti Progrès in October 2004.
Months later, after Amnesty International labeled him “a
prisoner of conscience,” the prosecutor conceded there was
no evidence against Jean-Juste and he was released (only to be
arrested again in July 2005).
The prisoner that most concerned the U.S.
Embassy was Aristide’s former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, who
was also imprisoned on Gousse’s watch. To force the de facto
authorities to either charge or release him after eight
months of detention, Neptune went on hunger strike in February
2005, courting death and alarming the Embassy. Ambassador Foley
met with the leadership of the “Interim Government of Haiti”
or IGOH (as the de facto regime was called) – President Boniface
Alexandre, his chief of staff Michel Brunache, and Prime
Minister Gérard Latortue – on Mar. 21, 2005 to pressure for
resolution of Neptune’s case, he reported in a
Mar. 23, 2005
cable. After “stressing the utter unacceptability of Neptune
dying in IGOH custody,” Foley proposed “Neptune's
transfer to a residential ‘prison’ annex” from the National
Penitentiary, and the “advice” was later followed. The
Embassy was “endeavoring to work with business leaders,
political parties and human rights groups to create space for an
eventual solution” to Neptune’s imprisonment, Foley wrote,
but questioned “whether Minister of Justice Gousse. . . is
willing to be a part of that solution or an obstacle to it.”
“Gousse has been the strongest
single force behind the persecution of political prisoners in
Haiti,” said Brian Concannon, Jr., director of the Institute
for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, who worked to free Jean-Juste
and Neptune. “He personally (and illegally) countermanded
release orders by judges and even his own prosecutors.”
While hounding democracy activists, Gousse
has defended some of Haiti’s most notorious human rights
violators. When former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, currently
under investigation and house arrest, returned to Haiti this
January, Gousse argued against his prosecution in an op-ed for
Le Nouvelliste, writing that “the notion of a crime
against humanity cannot be used in Haitian courts.”
As Justice Minister, Gousse also helped
clear the landmark 2000 Raboteau trial conviction (in absentia)
of right-wing FRAPH death-squad leader Louis Jodel Chamblain,
who had returned to Haiti as a leader of the “rebels”
that helped overthrow Aristide in February 2004.
“After himself acting as a judge in
impromptu ‘rebel’ tribunals of Lavalas sympathizers after the
coup, Chamblain became something of an embarrassment to the de
facto regime and its U.S. sponsors,” reported Haïti
Progrès in August 2004. “So he struck a deal for a
re-trial with de facto Justice Minister Bernard Gousse and on
April 22 took up residence in the Pétionville jail, which he
freely roams and regularly leaves for dinner and parties.”
Gousse had already declared that Chamblain
deserved to be pardoned for “his great service to the nation”
in helping to overthrow Haiti’s constitutional government and
had “nothing to fear” from Haitian justice under his
aegis, according to Haïti Progrès.
Therefore, it came as no surprise when on
Aug. 17, 2004, a kangaroo court overturned Chamblain’s Raboteau
conviction for mass murder by finding him “not guilty at dawn
after a non-stop all-night 14-hour trial at which only one
prosecution witness dared show up, and he was not an eyewitness,”
Haïti Progrès reported. “The trial was announced only
three business days earlier.”
Nonetheless, Chamblain remained in his
semi-imprisoned state awaiting retrial on other charges. The
U.S. Embassy feared that Latortue and Gousse would free him,
further embarrassing Washington.
Under the heading “Chamblain
shenanigans,” a
May 15, 2005 cable describes how Prime
Minister Latortue promised the U.S. Embassy that his
administration would not release Chamblain from prison. “Latortue
assured us that that Chamblain would not be released, saying
Minister of Justice Gousse agreed with him on this,” wrote
Chargé d'Affaires Douglas M. Griffiths. “He repeated this
twice, saying Chamblain would not be released as long as he was
Prime Minister.”
But Chamblain was released just three
months later. Most recently, Chamblain was seen standing beside
Duvalier shortly after his return, acting as his security chief.
Gousse’s outrageous conduct began to
generate discussions among Haiti’s overseers behind the scenes.
At a May 20 meeting with the U.S. Embassy and other “Core Group”
members, MINUSTAH chief Valdes reported that Haitian political
leaders overwhelmingly felt that “the IGOH should replace
some members of the cabinet, especially Justice Minister Gousse,”
Ambassador Foley reported in a
May 25, 2005 cable. “Valdes
claimed that the President favored replacing Gousse, but was
concerned about creating a ‘martyr for Haitian sovereignty’ if
it were perceived that Gousse was ditched in order to free
Neptune. The French Ambassador cautioned that the President and
PM [Prime Minister] had not made up their minds on Gousse.
Valdes said replacing Gousse would be a good thing for both
justice and security in Haiti, but that the timing was certainly
delicate.”
Even members of Haiti’s bourgeoisie
proposed replacing Gousse with people like Gervais Charles,
currently Duvalier’s lawyer and senior advisor to President
Martelly. “Businessman Reginald Boulos is one who has pushed
this with us saying Charles is ‘clever but not stubborn like
Gousse’,” reported Foley in
a Jun. 13, 2005 cable.
The next day, Gousse was finally given the
old heave-ho after ten US congresspersons wrote a letter to
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice calling for his immediate
removal, saying he “has clearly demonstrated that he is
unwilling to conduct his duties in an objective and responsible
manner.”
Gousse was replaced by Henri Dorleans, who,
“presented himself as the antithesis of Gousse, open,
friendly, and poised for action,” Ambassador Foley reported
in
a Jul. 5, 2005 cable.
“As an official in 2004 and more
recently as an independent lawyer, Gousse has shown a troubling
disregard for Haiti's obligation to prosecute human rights
crimes,” Amanda Klasing, an expert on Haiti for Human Rights
Watch, told Haïti Liberté.
Gousse’s nomination, whether it goes
forward or not, may reflect a similar “disregard” on the
part of President Martelly, whose right-wing affinities are
becoming more and more apparent. His first pick,
ultra-conservative businessman Daniel Rouzier, was soundly
rejected by the Parliament.
On his return from Spain on Jul. 9, a Radio
France International journalist asked Martelly: “And what if
Bernard Gousse is rejected?”
“There
is no ‘if’,” Martelly responded. “It’s Gousse that I
want!” |
