President says Duvalier has right to return home

IN HIS first public statement since former Haitian dictator Jean Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier returned home unexpectedly on January 16 from exile in France, president Rene Preval says the former strongman has every right to do so.

He, however, said Duvalier must now face an investigation of alleged abuses during his rule. "Duvalier had the right to return to the country, but under the constitution, he also must face justice," Preval told reporters, flanked by Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. Preval said he and Bellerive had met recently, with Dominican president Leonel Fernandez for four hours, to discuss Haiti’s political crisis and the ravaging cholera epidemic.

"If Duvalier is not in prison now, it is because he has not yet been tried," Preval said. He said, by law, Haitians cannot be prohibited from their homeland, stating that that applies to both Duvalier and former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who has been in exile in South Africa since his 2004 ousting but recently expressed interest in returning to his impoverished, French-speaking Caribbean homeland.

“They do not depend on my decision,” Preval said. “It is the nation’s constitution that prohibits exile.”

In breaking his silence since his unexpected return home, Duvalier told nationals that he decided to end his near 25-year exile to help in Haiti’s reconstruction.

Since Duvalier’s return, prosecutors have charged him with embezzlement and corruption; others followed by filing human rights abuse complaints against him.