OAS Accuses Army in Haiti of Crimes Against Humanity
Soldiers and their allies have waged a four-month campaign of “intimidation and terror” that has left 133 dead in Haiti, an Organization of American States commission said. It said the culprits should be tried for crimes against humanity.
The Inter-American Human Rights Commission said it verified reports of kidnapings, politically motivated rapes, secret torture centers and severely mutilated corpses left in the streets.
“The kind of crimes being committed by the de facto authorities are international crimes which would incur individual responsibility,” Patrick Robinson, a member of the OAS group, said while wrapping up a five-day fact-finding mission.
The five-member delegation reported 133 political executions and 55 abductions linked to politics, mostly of supporters of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
U.N. human rights experts say the army and its allied gunmen have waged a one-sided civil war since Aristide’s ouster by the military in 1991. They estimate up to 3,000 people have been killed.
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