Trial to begin for Haiti town’s ex-mayor on charges he lied about rights abuses to get US residency

BOSTON (AP) — A former mayor from Haiti is set to go on trial Monday after authorities say he lied on his visa application about committing rights abuses in his country.

Jean Morose Viliena, who has been living just north of Boston in the city of Malden, Massachusetts, was indicted in 2023 on three counts of visa fraud. Authorities said he wrote on his application that he had not “ordered, carried out or materially assisted in extrajudicial and political killings and other acts of violence against the Haitian people.”

But federal prosecutors allege that while mayor of the town of Les Irois, a community of about 22,000 on Haiti’s western tip, Viliena was involved in acts of violence against political foes.

In 2007, prosecutors said, he led a group of his allies to the home of a political opponent, where he and his associates shot and killed the opponent’s younger brother, then smashed his skull with a rock.

Prosecutors also allege that in 2008, Viliena and his allies went armed with guns, machetes, picks and sledgehammers to shut down a community radio station that he opposed. Authorities said he pistol-whipped and punched a man and ordered an associate to shoot and kill the man and another person.

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Both survived, but one of the men lost a leg and the other was blinded in one eye.

Viliena was found liable by an American jury in a civil trial in 2023 in the killing and the two attempted killings and assessed $15.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

The lawsuit was filed by the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability on behalf of David Boniface, Juders Ysemé and Nissage Martyr in Boston in 2017. Nissage Martyr died and his son, Nissandère Martyr, replaced him as a plaintiff.

The lawsuit was filed under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, which allows lawsuits to be filed in the U.S. against foreign officials over allegations of wrongdoing in their homeland if all legal avenues in their country have been exhausted.

The center also called on the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to work with Haiti’s government to ensure the safety of their clients and family members, who have been subjected to retaliation and intimidation.

Jason Benzaken, lead counsel for Villena, said his client now “has the opportunity to present evidence of his innocence.”

“Mr. Viliena is innocent of the charges against him and we are looking forward to the opportunity to prove this,” Benzaken said.

Boniface, Ysemé and Martyr live in hiding and said in statements Wednesday that while pleased with Viliena’s arrest, they are concerned about their families.

Martyr’s mother and sisters still live in Les Irois.