(AP) CONCORD, N.H. A former Haitian mayor who was found guilty of fabricating information about his violent background on his visa application was given a nine-year prison sentence and three years of monitoring on Friday. He will next face deportation procedures.
From December 2006 to February 2010, Jean Morose Viliena, a native of Malden, served as mayor of Les Irois, Haiti. He was sentenced Friday in federal court in Boston after being found guilty on three charges of visa fraud in March.
U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement that he lived freely and comfortably in our country for almost ten years, while the victims of his savagery endured anguish, fear, and exile. In addition to providing some justice for the lives he destroyed, today’s sentencing makes it abundantly evident that the US will no longer be a haven for those who violate human rights.
Prosecutors claim that Viliena carried out horrific atrocities against his political opponents in a remote, rural town of roughly 22,000 people on the western edge of Haiti. He was charged in 2007 with organizing a party of his supporters to a political rival’s house, where he and his companions allegedly shot and killed the rival’s younger brother before smashing his skull with a rock.
Prosecutors claimed that in 2008, Viliena and his supporters used pistols, machetes, picks, and sledgehammers to shut down a community radio station that he disagreed with. According to the authorities, he instructed an acquaintance to shoot and murder the man and another person after punching and pistol-whipping the man.
Both men lived, although one was blind in one eye and the other lost a limb.
However, Viliena denied ordering, carrying out, or substantially assisting in extrajudicial and political killings, as well as other acts of violence against the Haitian people, when he filed for a visa to enter the United States. Prosecutors stated he has reared a child who is a naturalized citizen of the United States and was later granted a permanent residence card.
In court, defense lawyers contended that the violence was carried out by members of a competing political party, some of whom they claimed were government witnesses. According to their description, the former mayor was a farmer’s son who went on to become a teacher before running for mayor in an effort to better the town’s circumstances.
In a civil trial in 2023, an American jury held Viliena guilty for the murder and the two attempted murders, and they awarded $15.5 million in compensation and punitive damages.
