Did Aristide Order Killing? -- U.S. Tries To Block Suit Filed In Death Of Haitian In Prison

NEW YORK - The U.S. government has moved to block a $10 million lawsuit alleging that exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had the head of the country's dreaded Tontons Macoute, Roger Lafontant, murdered two years ago in his prison cell.

Lafontant's widow, Gladys, who lives in New York City, filed the civil suit in September in federal court in Brooklyn. She alleged that, as the military was driving Aristide out of the country in 1991, Aristide ordered her husband's prison warden to murder him in reprisal. Lafontant, who was shot to death, was serving a life sentence for staging an unsuccessful coup attempt against Aristide earlier in the year.

Gladys Lafontant asked for the $10 million as damages under civil law to compensate her family for the loss of her husband, a supporter of the Duvalier family, longtime Haitian dictators.

A hearing on her lawsuit, scheduled for yesterday, was postponed until next month at the request of Gladys Lafontant's attorney, Andrew Greene, who wanted to study a brief that was submitted by the Justice and State departments Friday, requesting the suit be thrown out.

A counsel and adviser to Aristide, Mildred Trouillot, said yesterday: "The filing of the (Lafontant) suit at this time is obviously just politically motivated. It's just part of the larger disinformation campaign. The president continues to deny any accusations about the alleged killing of Lafontant."

The U.S. government argued Friday that Aristide is immune from a civil lawsuit in the United States as the head of a foreign government, according to the brief filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Millicent Clark of the office of U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter. "(P)ermitting this action to proceed against President Aristide would be incompatible with the United States' foreign-policy interest," Clark wrote in the brief along with federal prosecutors Vincent Garvey and Lois Bonsal Osler.

But Greene said yesterday that, under a federal law passed last year and known commonly as the torture-victims protection act, he believed that not even a head of state is immune from legal action in U.S. courts.

Greene said he did not know if claims about Roger Lafontant's activities as the head of the Tontons Macoute - the Duvaliers' paramilitary henchmen - were true but, in any case, Gladys Lafontant is "entitled to fair trial."

According to the lawsuit, Aristide ordered Haitian army Capt. Stagne Doura, head of Lafontant's prison, to have him shot and Doura, in turn, had a Haitian army private - Sincere Leus - carry out the murder.

Greene said Doura, who was given a lie-detector test in 1991 by FBI agents who were investigating the case at the request of the State Department, was found to be truthful when he said Aristide was responsible.

At least one human-rights group, Human Rights Watch, said earlier this year that the evidence against Aristide was weak, and said that by sending the FBI to investigate, the Bush administration had shown it was less interested in mass killings by the Haitian military than in one alleged murder committed by Aristide.