Jean-Claude Duvalier dies at 63; former dictator of Haiti

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, a former dictator of Haiti whose dynastic rule helped condemn the country to endemic poverty and violence before he was ousted by a popular uprising, died Saturday in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. He was 63.

The death was announced by the country’s president, Michel Martelly, on his Twitter account. The cause of death was listed as a heart attack.

Duvalier died at the home of a friend where he had been staying, according to the Associated Press.

Three years ago, Duvalier shocked his beleaguered nation with a dramatic return from exile amid speculation he would try to retake political power or regain a dominant role — goals that never materialized.

Duvalier’s death apparently ends efforts by human rights groups to hold him and his cronies accountable for years of torture and killing in the 1970s and ‘80s that left thousands dead and silenced democratic opposition.

Fleeing angry mobs, Duvalier went into exile in 1986, ending a family dynasty for which Haiti was little more than a personal plantation, maintaining it as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere while pocketing aid money and any income from the exports of sugar, lumber and other raw materials.

“Baby Doc,” at the tender age of 19, had succeeded his even more notorious father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. He promptly declared himself “president for life.”

He was born July 3, 1951, in the capital, according to several sources.

When he took power, he was initially portrayed as a kinder version of his father, allowing small political openings and currying better relations with the United States. But as his own brutality grew, so did an opposition movement under a person who then was a young priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As world opinion turned against him, Baby Doc fled.

He spent much of his exile on the French Riviera.

With little warning, Duvalier returned to the Caribbean island in 2011 as the country was still reeling from an earthquake a year earlier that killed at least 250,000 people and destroyed the few institutions it had. Many in Haiti thought Duvalier was coming home to launch a new political career.

“I’ve come to help,” he said in one of the rare public statements made by the former dictator upon his return.

But even then, he was ill; he seemed addled as he sat in a courtroom that attempted to bring numerous human rights charges against him. The trial never progressed, nor did his political comeback.

His return from exile, though, was a circus-like event for a desperate country looking for some kind of leadership, even a dictator. Thousands of Haitians lined the roads and followed every movement of Baby Doc’s caravan, even as it went from his luxury hotel in the verdant hills above the teeming capital to the courthouse, where prosecutors questioned him about slayings and other egregious human rights abuses perpetrated by his regime.

The many victims of the dual Duvalier regimes quickly came to the front, remembering the torture and extrajudicial executions carried out by government goons known as the Tonton Macoute.

Alix Fils-Aime, one of the survivors, told The Times in 2011 that he was detained and shipped off to the notorious Fort Dimache, where dissidents were imprisoned.

He recalled the prison’s nightmarish conditions: insects, overflowing toilets. Prisoners with skin diseases, diarrhea, pneumonia. Screams from the interrogation room. He could hear dogs “eating the flesh” of the many prisoners who died.

“The torture was the starvation, the conditions: They tried to help you die,” Bobby Duval, who was imprisoned at the age of 22 in 1975, told The Times in 2011. He had mildly criticized the regime.

“The brutality made people internalize fear, and it warped their minds,” Duval said, describing the legacy of the Duvalier brutality. “The normal relationships of solidarity did not develop, and our first instincts are fear and distrust.”

Separately, the Haitian government in 2011 also sought to prosecute Duvalier for financial crimes. He was believed to have stolen millions of dollars from the Haitian treasury during his 15-year rule. It was thought that much of it went to maintain his lifestyle on the Riviera, and then to settle his 1990 divorce from the glamorous Michele Bennett.

“From the moment of my return,” Duvalier said in response to the legal cases, “I’ve expected all kinds of persecution.”

Information on survivors was not immediately available, although Duvalier and Bennett had two children: son Francois Nicolas “Nico” and daughter Anya.

wilkinson@latimes.com