Trial to begin with the former scope of the city of Haiti for positions that he lied about the abuse of rights to obtain residence

Boston (AP) – A former mayor of Haiti will go to trial on Monday after the authorities say he lied to his visa request on committing rights abuses in his country.

Jean Morose Viliena, who has been living north of Boston in the city of Malden, Massachusetts, was accused in 2023 for three positions of visa fraud. The authorities said he wrote in his request that he had not “ordered, made or materially assisted in extrajudicial and political murders and other acts of violence against the Haitian people.”

But federal prosecutors claim that, while the mayor of the city of Les Irois, a community of approximately 22,000 at the western end of Haiti, Viliena was involved in acts of violence against political enemies.

In 2007, prosecutors said, he directed a group of his allies to the house of a political opponent, where he and his associates fired and killed the younger brother of the opponent, then broke his skull with a rock.

Prosecutors also claim that in 2008, Viliena and his allies were armed with weapons, machetes, selections and shit to close a community radio station to which he opposed. The authorities said he stepped on the gun and hit a man and ordered an associate to shoot and kill the man and another person.

Both survived, but one of the men lost a leg and the other was blinded in one eye.

Viliena was considered responsible for an American jury in a civil trial in 2023 in the murder and the two murder attempts and evaluated $ 15.5 million in compensatory and punitive damage.

The lawsuit was filed by the Justice and Responsibility Center based in San Francisco on behalf of David Boniface, the Judgers Ysemé and Nissage Martyr in Boston in 2017. Nissage Martyr died and his son, Nissandère Martyr, replaced him as a plaintiff.

The lawsuit was filed by virtue of the Law of Protection of Victims of Torture of 1991, which allows demands to be presented in the United States against foreign officials for accusations of irregularities in their homeland if all legal roads in their country have been exhausted.

The Center also asked the State Department, the United States Embassy in Haiti and the Inter -American Court of Human Rights to work with the Haiti government to guarantee the safety of its clients and relatives, which have been subjected to retaliation and intimidation.

Jason Benzaken, Villena’s main lawyer, said his client now “has the opportunity to present evidence of his innocence.”

“Lord. Viliena is innocent of the charges against him and we expect the opportunity to prove this,” said Benzaken.

Boniface, Ysemé and Martyr live in the hiding place and said in statements on Wednesday that although they are happy with the arrest of Viliena, they are concerned about their families.

Martyr’s mother and sisters still live in Les Irois.