Haitian ex-mayor guilty of US visa fraud linked to torture

By Nate Raymond

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.