Haiti View Inside a Killing Machine

For more than a generation, Haitians lived with the fear that they could be arrested, tortured and executed at any moment. The reign of terror was directed by a ruling clique whose armed squads were on call for round-the- clock executions like some killing machine. Although violence is still common in Haiti, that kind of despotic killing ended in February when President-for- Life Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier fled to France. Last week Haitians got a close-up look at the inner workings of the killing machine and at the man who ran it.

The island's television and radio stations carried live broadcasts of the trial of Luc Desyr, 62, chief of secret police for Baby Doc and before him for his father Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier, who died in 1971. The trial, on charges that included illegal arrest, torture and murder, provided most Haitians with their first live view of Desyr. During the Duvalier years, he was a shadowy figure whose picture never appeared in newspapers. A short man in a starched white shirt who now walks slowly and with a cane, Desyr protested his innocence over and over, producing a thin black Bible from his pocket and proclaiming somewhat incoherently in awkward French, "I am a good Christian. I am a Protestant. I am a Baptist."

After a noisy, 18-hour marathon trial that ended at 4:25 in the morning, Desyr was convicted of killing Jean-Jacques Dessalines Ambroise, a union activist, and his pregnant wife, and of torturing Jean-Jacques's brother Emmanuel, in 1965. Ambroise's cousin Alix, who was arrested along with the couple but survived, told the court that police threw Jean-Jacques into the trunk of their automobile for the drive to headquarters, where Desyr took part in the interrogation. In a darkened cell, Alix Ambroise said, he later heard what sounded like a "sack of coconuts" being dumped onto the floor. It was the broken body of his cousin, near death as a result of police beatings. Emmanuel Ambroise called Desyr and other Duvalier followers "sadistic animals who were satisfying their instincts in executing Duvalier's orders." After less than an hour's deliberation by the jury, the judge sentenced Desyr to death by firing squad and spectators in the crowded courtroom cheered.

Desyr has also been charged with the 1976 murder of two cousins of Dusmarsais Estime, President of Haiti during the 1940s. Desyr had been scheduled to stand trial on those charges last week, but the Estime murder trial was postponed to allow Desyr to appeal his conviction. Two 90-minute tape recordings of the torturing of the Estimes were seized from Desyr's home last February. The tapes, filled with screams, have been broadcast on Haitian radio stations. At one point on the tape, Desyr orders a man torturing one of the cousins to "break his finger."

Hector Estime, another cousin, was one of those who accused Desyr. Said he: "We want others to come forward. It's painful and many are still scared, but it must be done if we are to make certain that this sort of nightmare does not happen again."