(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, RSF asked that the individuals behind the murder of journalist Brignol Lindor be immediately arrested. During a local investigation, the Haitian Journalists Association (Association des journalistes haïtiens, AJH) collected a statement from members of the People’s Organisation (organisation populaire, OP) Dormi Nan Bois, which is close […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, RSF asked that the individuals behind the murder of journalist Brignol Lindor be immediately arrested. During a local investigation, the Haitian Journalists Association (Association des journalistes haïtiens, AJH) collected a statement from members of the People’s Organisation (organisation populaire, OP) Dormi Nan Bois, which is close to the ruling Fanmi Lavalas party. In their statement, the OP members confessed to having murdered the journalist. “We also ask that Mr. Dumay Bony, the Petit-Goâve mayor’s assistant who had publicly called for the killing of Brignol Lindor, also be arrested,” stated RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “You have here a unique opportunity to initiate a first step towards ending the impunity that reigns in Haiti,” the organisation concluded.
According to information collected by RSF, on 5 December 2001, the AJH announced that several members of the Dormi Nan Bois OP, which is close to the ruling Fanmi Lavalas party, admitted to having killed Lindor. The confessions were collected by AJH President Guyler Delva, who went to the scene of the crime with police officers. The killers, who demanded to see him alone, told Delva that they killed Lindor, “not because he was a journalist, but as an opposition member.” They explained that the murder was a revenge attack against Convergence démocratique (an opposition party), following an assault on Joseph Céus Duverger, a member of their organisation, that same morning. However, the victim’s brother has firmly denied that Lindor was a member of the opposition.
According to the AJH, the Dormi Nan Bois members first abducted Convergence démocratique member Love Augustin, who explained that his attackers lost interest in him once they caught sight of Lindor. They then went towards Lindor’s vehicle, all the while specifically identifying him as the journalist mentioned by the Petit-Goâve mayor’s assistant, Bony, as the person to whom the “zero tolerance” policy needed to be applied. Dormi Nan Bois officials admitted to having detained Augustin. They specified, however, that the crowd that was present at the scene was also responsible for the killing. They also admitted though to having sealed off the area in order to find Emmanuel Clédanor and kill him. Clédanor, a former Radio Plus correspondent, was accompanying Lindor but managed to escape.
Delva stated that he turned over all his information to Bellande Dumerzier, the government’s deputy superintendent, who is responsible for the case. Dumerzier stated that he issued arrest warrants for Bony and the journalist’s killers, and Duverger’s attackers. The police have yet to make any arrests.
On 3 December, Lindor, information director of Radio Echo 2000, a private radio station in the city of Petit-Goâve (sixty-eight kilometres south-west of Port-au-Prince), was killed by a crowd that stoned him and attacked him with machetes. Lindor had received many death threats from local authorities who are members of the ruling party after inviting opposition figures to speak on his programme “Dialogue”. On 30 November, Bony had called for the application of the “zero tolerance” policy to the opposition. He specifically made reference to Lindor. Under the “zero tolerance” policy, launched on 28 June by President Aristide, trials of delinquents who are caught red-handed are not required. Since the policy’s launch, several dozen assumed criminals have been lynched by citizens, with the police’s presumed collusion, according to human rights organisations.
Lindor, aged 32, a former Radio Signal FM local correspondent and former assistant secretary-general of the Petit-Goâve Journalists’ Association, was also a school principal and customs agent with the city.
