Haitian ex-mayor guilty of US visa fraud linked to torture
BOSTON, March 28 (Reuters) - A former Haitian mayor was convicted on Friday of U.S. charges that he had lied about having led a brutal campaign to kill and torture his political opponents in order to secure a green card allowing him to reside in the United States.
Jean Morose Viliena, now a lawful permanent U.S. resident who at the time of his indictment in 2023 was working as a truck driver and living in Malden, Massachusetts, was found guilty by a federal jury in Boston of three counts of visa fraud.
Prosecutors announced those charges a day after a different jury in a civil case ordered the former mayor of the rural Haitian town of Les Irois to pay $15.5 million to three Haitians who accused him of persecuting them or their families.
Viliena, 52, is appealing that earlier verdict and has argued he is innocent. Chief U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor scheduled sentencing for June 20. Viliena's attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Both the criminal and civil case shed a light on the widespread violence that has plagued Haiti.
Prosecutors said that in applying for a visa in 2008, Viliena had affirmed on a form that he had not "ordered, carried out or materially assisted in extrajudicial and political killings and other acts of violence against the Haitian people."
In fact, Viliena, after being elected to a four-year term as mayor of Les Irois in December 2006, personally committed or ordered the maiming, harm, humiliation or death of his adversaries, prosecutors alleged.
They said the victims include the three Haitians who pursued the earlier lawsuit, David Boniface, Juders Yseme and Nissage Martyr.
That case was filed in 2017 under the Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows for U.S. lawsuits against foreign officials accused of extrajudicial killings or torture when avenues for redress in their home countries are exhausted.
Prosecutors said Viliena in 2007 led a group of armed men to Boniface's home who then beat and fatally shot his brother, and later mobilized a group in 2008 that beat and shot Martyr and Yseme at a community radio station.
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Donald Trump's own Director of National Intelligence declared that the US intelligence perspective was that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon' just three months ago. Smoke rises after an attack on Iran (Image: Majid Asgaripour, via REUTERS) In a rational world, anyone advocating for British involvement in bombing Iran would be dismissed as a dangerous lunatic. Our media outlets would note that Iraq was plunged into a sectarian bloodbath and a playground for al-Qaeda, before that was supplanted by the even more extreme Daesh. We would recall the hideous war crimes committed by the US there, not least in Fallujah. We would be forced to recall how the triumphalism about Afghanistan gave way to a bloodbath, before the Taliban once again regained power in a stronger position than ever. We would be forced to listen to the hubris that accompanied intervention in Libya, which became regime change in total defiance of the original mandate, and led to the country becoming a violent failed state. Our media outlets would note that the Israeli prime minister is a wanted man evading justice, subject to an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued by the International Criminal Court, an institution our country is a founding member of. They would note the consensus among genocide scholars – including those in Israel itself – that genocide has been committed in Gaza. The heinous crimes in the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank would be noted, as well as the mass slaughter of civilians in Lebanon. That Israel is invading, occupying and attacking Syria as a matter of course would be noted, alongside statements by Israeli ministers openly calling for the establishment of a "Greater Israel" illegally annexing land which does not belong to it. 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