Claude Raymond; Led Haitian Army

Former Haitian Gen. Claude Raymond, 69, the once-dreaded chief of ousted dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s army. Raymond became Duvalier’s chief of staff and interior minister when the dictator succeeded his father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who died in 1971 after 14 years of repressive rule. Raymond, who had been a bodyguard and army chief to the senior Duvalier, retired shortly thereafter. After the younger Duvalier was ousted in 1986, Raymond declared himself a candidate for the presidency. An electoral council disqualified him in 1987, calling him a “notorious zealot” and an architect of Duvalier’s rule. Raymond was widely suspected of directing a Nov. 29, 1987, election day massacre, in which commandos hacked and shot to death more than a dozen voters at a high school in the Haitian capital. In July 1996, Raymond was arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. Courts ordered him released three times for lack of evidence, but the rulings were ignored by the government. On Wednesday, after three years in prison, at St. Francois de Sales Hospital in Port-au-Prince.