Haitian ex-mayor found guilty of lying about rights abuses to get US residency

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This article was published 28/03/2025 (195 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BOSTON (AP) — A former mayor from Haiti was found guilty on Friday for lying on his visa application about a series of politically motivated attacks against his opponents that left one dead and several people injured.

Jean Morose Viliena, who has been living just north of Boston in the city of Malden, Massachusetts, was indicted in 2023 on three counts of visa fraud. Authorities say he wrote on his application that he had not “ordered, carried out or materially assisted in extrajudicial and political killings and other acts of violence against the Haitian people.”

Federal prosecutors said that while Viliena was mayor of the town of Les Irois — an isolated, rural community of about 22,000 on Haiti’s western tip — he committed “violent atrocities” against his political foes. The impoverished community is only accessible by a dirt road that winds through the mountains. He faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

In 2007, prosecutors said, Viliena led a group of his allies to the home of a political opponent, where he and his associates shot and killed the opponent’s younger brother, then smashed his skull with a rock.

Prosecutors also allege that in 2008, Viliena and his allies went armed with guns, machetes, picks and sledgehammers to shut down a community radio station that he opposed. Authorities said he pistol-whipped and punched 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.

Defense attorneys argued in court that it was members of a rival political party — including some who they say are government witnesses — who committed the violence detailed in the charges against Viliena. They described the former mayor as the son of a farmer who became a teacher and eventually ran for mayor to improve conditions in town.

In 2023, Viliena was found liable by an American jury in a civil trial in connection with the killing and the two attempted killings and assessed $15.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.