The Hait­ian-based me­dia as­so­ci­a­tion, SOS Jour­nal­istes, Tues­day said it con­sid­ers the sit­u­a­tion “scan­dalous” that af­ter 14 years, the case re­gard­ing the mur­der of jour­nal­ist and po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor, Jean Léopold Do­minique, re­mains tied up in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

Do­minique, 70, the out­spo­ken own­er and di­rec­tor of the in­de­pen­dent sta­tion Ra­dio Haïti In­ter, was shot dead by an un­known gun­man On April 3, 2000. The sta­tion’s se­cu­ri­ty guard guard, Jean Claude Louis­saint. was al­so killed.

The SOS Jour­nal­istes in a state­ment said that “it is high time that the judges of the Court ful­ly as­sume their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties so that jus­tice can fi­nal­ly be done in the case of the dou­ble as­sas­si­na­tion of Jean Do­minique and his guardian Jean-Claude Louis­saint”.

It said that for­mer sen­a­tor, Mir­lande Liberus-Pavert, and eight oth­er peo­ple had been charged in con­nec­tion with the killings, but that they had been en­gaged in stalling the tri­al by ar­gu­ing that the case should be trans­ferred to an­oth­er Court of Ap­peal, out­side Port-au-Prince.

“And since then, more than 14 years lat­er, the Court of Cas­sa­tion…has still not man­aged to rule on Ms. Pavert’s re­quest to en­trust the case to a provin­cial Court of Ap­peal,” the me­dia group said.

“SOS Jour­nal­ists be­lieves that the de­nial of jus­tice has last­ed too long and calls on the judges of the Court of Cas­sa­tion to meet to ur­gent­ly rule on the case which has been ly­ing in the draw­ers of the Hait­ian jus­tice sys­tem for 24 long years,” the me­dia as­so­ci­a­tion said, adding that it was call­ing on all sec­tors of the so­ci­ety to con­demn the ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion.

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, Apr 3, CMC – 

CMC/gd/ir/2024