Concord, NH – Concord, NH (AP) – A former mayor of Haiti sentenced to having lied about his violent past on his request as a visa was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison and three years of surveillance, after which he will be subject to an expulsion procedure.
Jean Morose Viliena, of Malden, Massachusetts, was the mayor of Les Irois, Haiti, from December 2006 to February 2010. He was found guilty of three visa fraud chiefs in March and sentenced to the Federal Court of Boston on Friday.
“For more than a decade, he lived freely and at ease in this country while the victims of his brutality lived in fear, exile and pain,” said American lawyer Leah Foley in a statement. “The sentence of today brings a measure of justice for the life he has broken and sends a clear message: the United States will not be a safe for human rights abusers.”
According to prosecutors, Viliena committed “violent atrocities” against her political enemies in an isolated rural community of around 22,000 residents on the western tip of Haiti. In 2007, he was accused of having directed a group of his allies to the home of a political opponent, where he and his associates shot down the younger brother of the opponent, then broke the skull with a rock.
In 2008, Viliena and her allies became armed with firearms, machetes, choice and hammers to close a community radio station to which he opposed, prosecutors said. The authorities said he had screwed up the pistol and struck a man and ordered a partner to shoot and kill the man and another person.
The two survived, but one of the men lost one leg and the other was blinded with one eye.
However, when he asked for a visa to enter the United States, Viliena denied having “ordered, carried out or helped materially in extrajudicial and political murders and other acts of violence against the Haitian people”. He then received a permanent resident card and raised an American birthday child, said prosecutors.
Defense lawyers argued in court that they were members of a rival political party – including some who, according to them, are witnesses to the government – who have committed violence. They described the former mayor as the son of a farmer who became a teacher and finally ran for the mayor to improve the conditions in the city.
In 2023, Viliena was tried responsible by an American jury in a civil trial within the framework of the murder and the two attempts to murder and estimated $ 15.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
