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NEPTUNE RELEASED, HUNDREDS STILL HELD IN HAITI PRISONS.

Article Excerpt
Yvon Neptune, former Haitian prime minister, was released from prison July 28. He had been jailed shortly after the president under whom he served, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991, 1994-1996, 2001-2004), was toppled and exiled in February 2004. Neptune left Pacot National Penitentiary in frail condition, the result of an on-and-off hunger strike to protest his imprisonment that he had been conducting for much of the time. It had been Neptune's contention that he was a political prisoner of the US-installed interim government of Gerard Latortue. He had been locked up without trial for alleged involvement in a massacre in the northern town of Saint Marc in February 2004.

The release cannot be taken to mean that Neptune's battle is over. He has expressed concern at the manner of his release, noting that he has not formally been absolved. He has merely been let go in dramatic fashion, in what some reports have called a political release, others, a humanitarian release. He was taken aboard a UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) ambulance under heavy security, with UN police deployed in all directions. Neptune said as he left the prison, "It's not freedom yet; the laboratories that invented those kind of imaginary crimes are very strong."

A shocking and scandalous decision

Samuel Madistin, a lawyer for the prosecution, the relatives of victims of the La Scierie Massacre, as it has come to be called, took immediately to the national airwaves to denounce the...

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