Overview:
A former mayor of Les Irois, Haiti, has been sentenced to 9 years in a U.S. jail for mendacity about his violent previous on a visa utility. Jean Morose Viliena might be deported after finishing his sentence.
By HOLLY RAMER
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A former mayor from Haiti convicted of mendacity about his violent previous on his visa utility was sentenced Friday to 9 years in jail and three years of supervision, after which he might be topic to deportation proceedings.
Jean Morose Viliena, of Malden, Massachusetts, was the mayor of Les Irois, Haiti, from December 2006 till February 2010. He was convicted of three counts of visa fraud in March and sentenced Friday in federal court docket in Boston.
“For greater than a decade, he lived freely and cozy on this nation whereas the victims of his brutality lived in worry, exile and ache,” U.S. Lawyer Leah Foley mentioned in assertion. “Right now’s sentence brings a measure of justice for the lives he shattered and sends a transparent message: america won’t be a secure have for human rights abusers.”
In keeping with prosecutors, Viliena dedicated “violent atrocities” towards his political foes in an remoted, rural group of about 22,000 residents on Haiti’s western tip. In 2007, he was accused of main a bunch of his allies to the house of a political opponent, the place he and his associates shot and killed the opponent’s youthful brother, then smashed his cranium with a rock.
In 2008, Viliena and his allies went armed with weapons, machetes, picks and sledgehammers to close down a group radio station that he opposed, prosecutors mentioned. Authorities mentioned he pistol-whipped and punched a person and ordered an affiliate to shoot and kill the person and one other particular person.
Each survived, however one of many males misplaced a leg and the opposite was blinded in a single eye.
When he utilized for a visa to enter the U.S., nevertheless, Viliena denied having “ordered, carried out or materially assisted in extrajudicial and political killings and different acts of violence towards the Haitian folks.” He later obtained a everlasting resident card and has raised a baby who’s a U.S. citizen by start, prosecutors mentioned.
Protection attorneys argued in court docket that it was members of a rival political occasion — together with some who they are saying are authorities witnesses — who dedicated the violence. They described the previous mayor because the son of a farmer who turned a instructor and finally ran for mayor to enhance situations on the town.
In 2023, Viliena was found liable by an American jury in a civil trial in reference to the killing and the 2 tried killings and assessed $15.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.