Gerard Jean-Juste

Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste was a Roman Catholic priest in Haiti, and was the executive director of the Haitian Refugee Center, founded in 1978 in Miami, Florida. He was also known as one of the two plaintiffs on behalf of the Haitian people in the Duvalier case, Jean-Juste v. Duvalier, No 86-0459 Civ (US District Court, SD Fla., January 8, 1988), under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows non-citizens to file suits for human rights abuses overseas. Jean-Juste and the second plaintiff, who were represented by Ira J. Kurzban, were awarded damages against Jean Claude and Michelle Bennett Duvalier worth $1 million, and $750,000 respectively as a result of "physical and emotional torture incurred under the Duvalier regime." The US District Court in Miami at the time also ordered $504 million to be paid to the Haitian people. An estimated several hundred million US dollars of Duvalier’s money alleged to have been invested abroad illegally. Jean-Juste was an outspoken supporter of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and after Aristide was overthrown in 2004, was imprisoned for seven weeks by the Haitian interim government. After being released from prison on November 29, 2004, again, he was arrested on July 21, 2005 by police, right before he was expected to register as a candidate for the Fanmi Lavalas political party in the 2006 national elections. He was granted temporary release in late January 2006 to receive medical treatment in the US for his leukemia. It was only in 2008, did the Haitian judiciary agree to dismiss the remaining charges against him in the case regarding the murder of journalist Jacques Roche. Also following up on the Duvalier case an order from a Geneva court on May 30, 2007 was resulted in blocking one of the accounts linked to Duvalier in Switzerland, in the aim to find a favourable solution for the Haitian people concerning the money. Also on February 12, 2009, the Swiss government announced that approx. $7 million in assets of several other accounts that were frozen in Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich, since June 2002, are to be handed over to Haiti. Gerard Jean-Juste died on May 27, 2009. He was 62 years old.