Haitian Murder Mystery

Bodies have disappeared. Suspects have died mysteriously. And the cast of characters who may have conspired to kill Haiti’s most prominent journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique, is more colourful than any mystery writer could dream up. More than a year after Dominique was gunned down in front of his radio station, his death still haunts Haiti – not just because he was an icon of the resistance that fought the Duvalier regimes of the 1980s and ’90s, but because he was a strong supporter of the ruling party and a close friend of the president himself.

The Dominique case illustrates some of the phenomenal challenges facing the President: a breakdown in the rule of law and corrupt political elite, not to mention a political crisis that has led international donors to freeze $500 million in aid the country desperately needs. Hoping to improve Haiti’s sorry state, Dominique had used his pulpit to fight high-level corruption. He “was so close to power he underestimated the danger,” says Marvel Dandin of Radio Kiskeya, an independent station. “Those in power are determined to stay there.”

Sources close to the investigation believe the 69-year-old journalist was killed in retaliation for accusations he made during his popular radio program against officials in the ruling Lavalas Family Party. Many of the men are former military officers who joined Aristide’s cause in the 1990s. Dominique was privy to internal information that implicated the officials in shady businesses – from car theft to drug trafficking – according to investigation sources. They say Lavalas officials also wanted him out of the way because he posed a political challenge. He was prominent in a national “peasant movement”, and Lavalas politicians believed Dominique wanted to challenge the President in the next presidential election, which the President won by a landslide. (Dominique’s widow denies this.)

In the most serious accusations against those in power, Dominique suggested that Sen. Dany Toussaint and some of his associates were responsible for some unsolved attacks on Haiti officials, including the murder of Jean Lamy, slated to become chief of police. In fact, Dominique often accused Toussaint of being corrupt. Toussaint denies any wrongdoing. He refused to be questioned by the investigating judge and challenged the investigation after it was leaked to the Haitian press that he was a prime suspect. “I’m ready to defend myself,” he declared recently in the Haitian press. “The Senate can strip me of my immunity … I’m ready for battle.”

Dominique’s widow, Michele Montas, also a journalist, used her Haitian and international contacts to keep the case alive. But the investigation progressed slowly. Judge Claudy Gassant, a dapper small man with a quick smile, told NEWSWEEK he would finish the investigation no matter what. He ended up resigning in June and fled Haiti after he learned there was a contract on his life. He returned in July, after international pressure led the government to offer him protection. But the trail is growing cold. Last September the car thief who supplied the getaway vehicles to Dominique’s assassins died unexpectedly after an operation to remove several bullets from his buttocks (inflicted in an unrelated incident). When Gassant went to examine the body, it had disappeared from the morgue.

So far the President has shown little interest in getting to the bottom of his friend’s murder. He has bigger worries, like trying to reach a political accord with the opposition over charges that the election won by Toussaint and other Lavalas politicians was rigged. A two-month effort by the Organization of American States (OAS) almost produced a settlement that called for holding re-elections for 18 Senate seats and the entire lower house. Those efforts were thwarted by a rash of attacks by men in military uniform in late July, directed at several police stations, which left five dead and 15 wounded. The government and the opposition traded accusations over who sponsored the thugs.

Dominique believed that Lavalas (which means ‘cleansing’ in Creole) would survive as a movement only if party leaders honored “justice, transparency and fairness.” Getting to the truth about his assassination won’t end Haiti’s problems, but it might at least put the country closer to the ideal.

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

Now read the article carefully, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use them in the further discussion of the problem.

Resistance, a ruling party, a corrupt political elite, to freeze aid, a source, to do smth in retaliation for smth, to be privy to (internal) information, to implicate smb in smth, a shady business, to be prominent (in a movement), to challenge smb, to leak (a leak of information), a prime suspect, to flee a country, an assassin, an unrelated incident, to get to the bottom of smth, to reach a political accord with …, a settlement, to trade accusations.