Trial to begin for Haiti town’s ex-mayor on charges he lied about rights abuses to get U.S. residency
A former mayor from Haiti is set to go on trial Monday after authorities say he lied on his visa application about committing rights abuses in his country.
BOSTON — A former mayor from Haiti is set to go on trial Monday after authorities say he lied on his visa application about committing rights abuses in his country.
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 said 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.”
But federal prosecutors allege that while mayor of the town of Les Irois, a community of about 22,000 on Haiti’s western tip, Viliena was involved in acts of violence against political foes.
In 2007, prosecutors said, he 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.
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