Machine Guns Fired at Home of Haiti Presidential Candidate, 2 Party Offices

Assailants firing machine guns attacked a presidential candidate’s home and the headquarters of two political parties Friday in the fourth day of violence preceding Haiti’s first elections in 30 years.

Radio Metropole and Radio Haiti Inter said a man guarding the home of Gregoire Eugene, a candidate for the centrist Social Christian Party in the Nov. 29 polls, was shot in the knee and taken to a hospital.

There were no other reports of casualties in the early morning attacks.

Armed men also sprayed machine-gun fire at the headquarters of the Movement for the Installation of Democracy and the Rally of Progressive Democrats, both centrist political parties in suburbs of Port-au-Prince.

“A burst of machine-gun fire woke us and we all threw ourselves onto our stomachs to avoid being hit,” Eugene said. “We thought that after the 7th of February the country had seen the end of this psychosis of fear. . . . It not only worries me, but it disgusts me too.”

The attacks were in apparent retaliation for the order Monday by the Provisional Electoral Council to remove 12 presidential candidates with ties to the Duvalier dictatorship from the ballot.

Nearly 30 years of dictatorship under President-for-Life Francois Duvalier and then his son ended when Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier fled Haiti on Feb. 7, 1986.