HAITI: INVESTIGATION INTO BERTIN MURDER CONTINUES

(1 Apr 1995) English/Nat
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has denied that his interior minister had anything to do with the assassination of a leading government opponent.
The news that a top official had been linked to the killing of Mireille Durocher Bertin took some of the lustre off President Clinton's visit to Port-au-Prince to turn over command of the U.S. led intervention force to the United Nations.
An investigation into the case is continuing.
Allegations that Haiti's Interior Minister may have been involved in the gunning down of a political opponent last Tuesday were denied by President Aristide - but the case is far from settled.
Despite warnings to both Aristide and the victim, Mireille Durocher Bertin
was ambushed on a downtown street and killed. Her killers escaped.
Bertin had led opposition to the U.S. intervention that ousted the military government and restored Aristide to power three years after the military ousted him from his elected office.
Her family are convinced the crime was no accident.
SOUNDBITE:
There is no democracy here. The democracy that they're talking about is not - they don't know what democracy really means. Like I told you before democracy is being able to express yourself freely and being able to wake up the next morning and going to the store without being afraid of being shot because of something you said the day before. That's not the way it is here.
SUPER CAPTION: Rachel Durocher, Sister of murdered woman
The assassins who gunned her down on the streets of the capital haven't been caught, but diplomatic sources say they may be connected to the interior minister, former army Brig. Gen. Mondesir Beaubrun.
SOUNDBITE:
Even in the case that Mr. Aristide didn't do it personally, he had around him many groups, extremists and radical groups, who think nothing of human life.
SUPER CAPTION: Jacques Durocher, Father of murdered woman
Her killing, as an opponent of the U.S. intervention and its mission to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, is a grave embarrassment to the government of Haiti.
SOUNDBITE:
And anytime you have a high-profile assassination such as this unfortunate event, it simply conjures up all the stereotypes of the past and starts putting people into groups and categories. And it seems to me we've got to move beyond that ultimately if we're going to have democracy here.
SUPER CAPTION: Mr. William Swing, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti
Aristide said his government would do everything in its power to
apprehend the killers, but acknowledged the limitations of Haiti's
non functioning justice system.

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