Haitian Murder Mystery.(Brief Article)

Bodies have disappeared. Suspects have died mysteriously. And the cast of characters who may have conspired to kill Haiti's most prominent journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique, is more colorful than any mystery writer could dream up. More than a year after Dominique was gunned down in front of his radio station, his death still haunts Haiti--not just because he was an icon of the resistance that fought the Duvalier regimes of the '80s and '90s, but because he was also a strong supporter of the ruling party and a close friend of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

As the Western Hemisphere's poorest country trundles toward total disintegration, the Dominique case illustrates some of the phenomenal challenges facing Aristide: a breakdown in the rule of law and a corrupt political elite, not to mention a moribund private sector, bankrupt public coffers and a political crisis that has led international donors to freeze $500 million in aid the country desperately needs. Hoping to improve Haiti's sorry state, Dominique had used his bully pulpit to blast high-level corruption. It would be his undoing: he "was so close to power he underestimated the danger," says Marvel Dandin of Radio Kiskeya, an independent station. "[Those] in power are determined to stay there."

Sources close to the investigation believe the 69-year-old journalist was killed in retaliation for accusations he made during his popular radio program on Haiti Inter against officials in the ruling Lavalas Family Party. Many of the men are former military officers who joined Aristide's cause in the 1990s. Dominique was privy to internal information that implicated the officials in shady businesses--from car theft to drug trafficking--according to investigation sources. They say some Lavalas officials also wanted him out of the way because he posed a political challenge. He was prominent in a national "peasant movement," and Lavalas politicians believed Dominique wanted to challenge Aristide in the November 2000 presidential election, which Aristide won by a landslide. (Dominique's widow denies this.)

In the most serious accusation against those in power, in late 1999 Dominique suggested that Sen. Dany Toussaint and some of his associates were responsible for several unsolved attacks on Haitian officials, including the murder of Jean Lamy, slated to become chief of police. Toussaint had been interim head of police in 1994 and had wanted the job again, according to a former U.N. investigator. In fact, Dominique often accused Toussaint of being corrupt. Toussaint denies any wrongdoing. He has refused to be questioned by the investigating judge and challenged the investigation ...