Lawyer: Haiti judge detained in alleged coup plot remains jailed despite release order

Jacqueline Charles

A Supreme Court judge in Haiti who had been arrested in an alleged coup plot against President Jovenel Moïse remained in jail Wednesday night despite a magistrate’s order that he be released.

Judge Grecia Norcéus ruled that Ivickel Dabrésil’s detention Sunday at 2 a.m. was outside the margins of the law and that as a high court justice he is required to go before a special tribunal, the head of a Haitian judicial organization and the magistrate’s defense lawyer both said.

“The order was issued on the spot, but it was not executed this afternoon, so the judge has not yet been released,” Marc Antoine Maisonneuve, a lawyer for Dabrésil’s, told the Miami Herald.

Judge Jean Wilner Morin, president of the National Association of Haitian Magistrates, said he went to the Croix-des-Bouquets prison, located on the outskirts of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, to await Dabrésil’s release but that he was not allowed in. Haiti’s justice minister dismissed the bailiff involved in the case. A letter signed by the minister and addressed to the bailiff said he has been put on leave for “grave fault.”

“I am really perplexed and do not have a lot of hope because what’s happening here has nothing to do with the law,” Morin said. “Everything that‘s happening here has to do with dictatorship —but not the law.”

Haiti is in the midst of a constitutional crisis as opponents of Moïse continue to take to the streets demanding his ouster. Detractors contend the unpopular leader’s term expired Sunday but Moïse insists his term ends in 2022. Thus far, he has been backed by powerful international actors including the Biden administration. The country does not have a constitutional court that could step in and decide the matter.

Dabrésil was among 23 people detained in what authorities are calling an attempted coup. Officials say they have ample evidence, including recordings showing they conspired with security at the presidential palace, had weapons and planned to kill the president. Morin said some of the guns presented by police as evidence were given by two previous police chiefs to the judge’s security detail — who were also arrested — to protect him.

Dabrésil was transferred to the prison in the Port-au-Prince suburb on Tuesday after being jailed at a police station for two days. His alleged co-conspirators also remain jailed.

Some members of the foreign diplomatic corps and Haitians with little faith in the president are skeptical about the official account of the apparent plot. Still, it has roiled Haiti for days and led to a showdown between Moïse and the judiciary.

Following the arrests, the opposition installed their own provisional president, also a judge on the Supreme Court. Moïse later issued an executive order removing three Supreme Court judges, including Dabrésil, a magistrate who criticized the arrest and a judge installed by the opposition as provisional president.

He removed three Supreme Court justices including Dabrésil, the provisional president installed by opposition and a third judge who criticized the arrest

The move caught the ire of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, which said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned abut any actions that risk damaging Haiti’s democratic institutions. The executive order is now being widely scrutinized to determine whether it conforms to Haiti’s Constitution and laws.”

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