Journalists Tell of Torture by Haitian Police
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Two Haitian journalists released after a two-week detention last week charged that police tortured them in efforts to extract the names of their sources in the political opposition.
The journalists, Sony Vaval and Raynold Jacques, said they were arrested April 3 in a police roundup in Cavaillon on the southwest corner of the island but spent most of their detention in prison barracks in the capital. They were released Wednesday afternoon.
“I was beaten every night and I don’t know how I am alive today,” Jacques said. “They wanted to know who are my political contacts.”
Vaval said he was so brutalized that he became disoriented and did not realize he was in the capital.
The Haitian government of President-for-life Jean-Claude Duvalier, under U.S. pressure to improve human rights, is expected soon to authorize the creation of political parties.
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