The October 2022 murder sparked outrage and street protests. But the investigation into the death of the popular 39-year-old radio journalist has languished, leading his family and friends to accuse the government of a cover-up to protect the man who is in charge of prosecuting the crime, Ronald Richemond. Tesse had gone on his radio show to accuse Richemond, an influential local prosecutor and political appointee, of plotting to have him killed weeks before the murder. Now, a former member of Richemond’s security team has provided new details on the alleged plot.
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Three days after Tesse’s dead body was discovered, Richemond issued a video statement on Facebook in which he rejected the accusations against him. “The rumors circulating that it was me who killed Garry Tesse are false,” he said, adding that he would seek justice for the journalist and his family. To date, Richemond has not been charged with any crime. But his controversial handling of the case, which involved the arrest of another local journalist, has led to calls for a full investigation from local media organizations and the country’s public ombudsman.
CPJ contacted Richemond over text and social media multiple times with a list of questions, including whether he ordered the journalist’s murder. He never responded, nor did he answer several phone calls. Guy Delva, president of Haitian group SOS Journalistes, said he spoke with Richemond last year and that the prosecutor again rejected claims of his involvement in Tesse’s killing.
“This case must be resolved as soon as possible. A message urgently needs to be sent to prevent this chronic impunity from triggering more crimes against journalists,” said Delva, who has investigated the case.
Where impunity reigns
Even in a country that has slid into virtual lawlessness and gang rule following the assassination of the country’s president in 2021 – a state of affairs that prompted the March 12 resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry – Tesse’s case has shocked local journalists and lawyers accustomed to attacks on reporters being carried out with impunity.
The case exemplifies a long-running problem in Haiti’s justice system, experts say, pointing to a low conviction rate as investigations are snarled by political influence and crime is allowed to fester.
“The Haitian system has always been in the hands of one faction or another of the political class, or those with money,” said Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia. “It’s a justice system within a mafioso system,” he told CPJ. Fatton pointed to the notorious case of journalist Jean Léopold Dominique, who was murdered at the gates of his radio station in 2000. It took 14 years to identify his killers, but a mastermind was never arrested.
In February, a judge indicted 51 people for conspiring in the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, including his wife, Martine Moïse, but failed to identify the motive or who ordered it. Critics accuse the government of meddling in the investigation to hide its own complicity.
“There are judges occasionally who try to do the right thing, but they usually end up being fired or sometimes killed,” said Fatton.
Tesse’s critical reporting
The son of a rice farmer, Tesse was well read and liked to dress in a jacket, tie, and simple trilby-style hat. He was also a thorn in the side of local authorities for persistently denouncing alleged corruption and abuse of power. “Haiti lost an elegant man, a good man who only wanted to help others,” his widow, Yvana Despagne Tesse, 35, told CPJ.
Tesse’s radio broadcasts criticizing the bureaucracy of Les Cayes, the most populous city in Haiti’s south-west peninsula, made him into a local celebrity. He was also a lawyer and admired for his courage in speaking out for Haiti’s downtrodden masses, as well as the caustic tongue lashings he meted out to local officials.
“He stood up for the people who have no voice, the least fortunate who the government ignores,” said his younger brother, Vano Tesse. “He was an honest man who described things the way they are. Some people didn’t like that, so he created powerful enemies,” he added.
Tesse regularly accused local officials of corruption, including arbitrary arrests and taking bribes to fix property disputes. He was especially critical of Richemond, the city’s powerful prosecutor (“Commissaire de Gouvernement”), often singling him out on his midday radio show “Gran Lakou,” (Haitian Creole for “Big Yard”) on Radio Le Bon FM.
Tesse’s brother and a local journalist told CPJ that Tesse also represented gasoline merchants in a dispute with Richemond in 2020, when local authorities cracked down on unlicensed street sales of gasoline. “Richemond controls everything here in the south of Haiti. He acts as though he is above the law,” said Vano Tesse.
Richemond also had a reputation for cracking down on crime. According to Delva, many in Les Cayes credited him with efforts to stem gang violence that swept the country after Moïse’s death. But critics have accused the prosecutor of overstepping his authority and taking the law into his own hands. His actions led to a rare reprimand from Haiti’s Minister of Justice late last year over allegations of improper behavior in a territorial dispute with another controversial prosecutor for a neighboring jurisdiction.
In a strongly worded letter, the minister Emmelie Prophète, said she was “appalled” by Richemond’s behavior, citing his “invectives, in the media” against a fellow prosecutor. She concluded by warning him that “no additional blunders will be tolerated in the accomplishment of your duties.”
An alleged plot to kill
On October 18, 2022, Tesse left his house in the town of Cavaillon about 12 miles east of Les Cayes at about 10 a.m. to head to the radio station. He shared a ride aboard a pick-up taxi, got a phone call en route, and was dropped off on the outskirts of the city, according to his lawyer, citing witnesses.
That was the last time anyone spoke to him. When he failed to show up at Radio Le Bon his colleagues called his phone but there was no answer.
“We knew right away something was wrong as he was very good about returning calls,” Charles Boyer, his co-host on Gran Lakou, told CPJ.
When his brutalized body was found a week later, public anger turned on Richemond, and some residents marched on a property he owned, according to a local media report.
Before his death, Tesse had received overtures from Richemond to tone down his public criticism of the prosecutor in return for money, according to his lawyer.
“He sent people to try to negotiate a bribe, to shut him up,” Anthony Cyrion, the attorney for Tesse’s family, told CPJ.
Shortly before his death, Tesse had gone on radio to denounce an alleged plot by Richemond to have him killed. According to his friends and family, Tesse’s source was a former member of the prosecutor’s security team, Ricardo Bain, who was also a friend of the journalist. Bain resigned from his job in protest over what he described as the prosecutor’s “criminal” activity, according to the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), a prominent human rights group in Haiti, which provided its unpublished investigation on the case to CPJ.
Bain was arrested the day after Tesse’s disappearance, accused of slandering the prosecutor. He remains in jail and CPJ has not been able to contact him.
However, Bain recently accused Richemond of ordering the killing in a recorded phone interview from jail with SOS Journalistes in February.
“It was Richemond who planned the assassination,” Bain said in the recording, which CPJ obtained. CPJ could not independently verify the authenticity of the recording, but people who know Bain said that the voice appeared to be his. Bain’s account is also consistent with what Tesse’s family said Bain told them.
Bain noted that he had worked for Richemond for several years and was originally impressed by his efforts to tackle criminal gangs. But gradually he became aware of what he described as illegal activities in the prosecutor’s office.
Bain was also a close friend of Tesse, describing him as “like my brother” and supportive of his efforts to denounce local corruption.
“He [was] very passionate on the radio,” he said, adding that Tesse’s program was “intense, and many people [listened] to it.”
Bain told SOS that the alleged murder plot was hatched in May 2022, when Richemond attempted to recruit Bain, along with three other members of his staff, to kill Tesse. At first, Bain said, he played along with the conspiracy to try and protect his friend. At the same time, he warned Tesse that his life was in danger. He said he even attempted to abort the plot by offering to try and bribe Tesse in return for ceasing his attacks on the prosecutor.
But Tesse refused to back down. “He told me, ‘I wouldn’t take a dime from Richemond who is doing a lot of bad things in this city. That would be like supporting him in all his criminal activities.’”
Suspects arrested
Tesse’s family say local residents reported seeing him being taken by his kidnappers on a motorcycle to an area of shipping containers where his mutilated corpse was later found. According to Tesse’s lawyer, residents identified one of his kidnappers as Wilkens Thiogène, one of Richemond’s security team. Thiogène was subsequently arrested as a suspect in the murder, though never formally charged. He has since disappeared and CPJ was unable to reach him for comment.
Tesse’s widow and colleagues told CPJ that they also began to receive threats when they took to the radio to denounce Richemond. At least one person showed up outside Tesse’s house firing weapons in the air. “I didn’t dare leave the house for days,” said his widow, who wasn’t able to identify the source of the gunshots.
Tesse’s friend and fellow journalist, Guerlan Hyppolite, was especially vocal on the radio in demanding justice for Tesse, and accused Richemond of orchestrating Tesse’s killing during a November 2022 march through the streets of Les Cayes.
Hyppolite says Richemond also tried to silence him with bribes. Hyppolite went into hiding but was arrested in late 2022 as a suspect in the murder of his friend. “They tried to negotiate with me too, that’s why I was arrested. I said I won’t negotiate with a vagabond like him,” Hyppolite told CPJ.
The Tesse family refused to back down and in June 2023 went before the judge handling the investigation, Robert Jourdain, to accuse Richemond of ordering the murder.
“We are determined to seek justice for Gary Tesse who was killed to silence a voice that spoke for the people,” Cyrion, the family’s attorney, said.
The family named Thiogène and two other members of Richemond’s security team as the suspected killers.
When Jourdain summoned members of the prosecutor’s security team to testify, they ignored the summons, according to three CPJ sources.
Hyppolite was released in October 2023 after the judge found no evidence implicating him in the murder. Thiogène was also released on the same day. CPJ obtained copies of the two orders releasing Hyppolite and Thiogène, both bearing judge Jourdain’s signature. However, the judge told CPJ that he did not sign the order releasing Thiogène.
“If this order was fabricated it’s a shocking violation of the legal system,” said Cyrion. “Only the judge has the authority to free people. We are tired of asking the government to intervene and remove the prosecutor,” he added.
The legal stand-off between the judge and the prosecutor has effectively blocked the investigation from advancing. Under Haitian law the judge has exclusive control over the investigation, including collecting evidence and summoning witnesses to testify. But it’s the prosecutor who handles the trial phase.
The judge has requested extra security protection and has privately told several people he wants to be relieved of the case due to threats he has received, according to several sources who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.
Meanwhile, Haiti’s public ombudsman has called for accountability for the “authors of this abominable crime, whoever they may be.” In a February statement, the ombudsman, Renan Hedouville, called the killing an “assassination” that was “carried out to silence those journalists who attack corruption and abuses of power, in particular those of the public prosecutor of Les Cayes, Ronald Richemond.”
With Thiogène back on the streets, Tesse’s family members say they are more fearful than ever and are in hiding. Tesse’s brother said he dares not sleep in the same place two nights in a row and is constantly on the move.
“We live clandestinely. Richemond has people everywhere. We know they are watching us,” he said.
]]>In a statement issued ahead of the meeting between Guatemala’s President Bernardo Arévalo and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, March 25, the organizations called on the two leaders to undertake tangible measures to promote and safeguard press freedom in Guatemala, to endorse efforts aimed at securing the release of journalist José Rubén Zamora, and to advocate for the protection of journalists who have faced arrests and prosecutions in recent years.
Here is the text of the joint statement:
]]>Miami, March 20, 2024—The kidnappers of journalist Lucien Jura should release him immediately and not hold journalists as pawns, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
Jura was abducted from his home in Pétion-Ville on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Monday, March 18, according to news reports. That same day, gangs attacked several homes in the area, leaving at least 10 dead.
On Tuesday, Jura confirmed his kidnapping in a brief phone call with the secretary-general of the Haitian group SOS Journalists, Guy Delva. Delva told CPJ that he called Jura’s cellphone, and one of the kidnappers answered.
“I asked to speak to Jura, and he said ‘Okay’ and passed the phone to him,” Delva told CPJ. “He spoke in a calm and serious tone.” The journalist told Delva he was doing well and taking steps to get out of the situation.
The kidnappers also contacted Jura’s family, according to a post by Jean Peguy, a lawyer and former presenter of the “Moment of Truth” program on Radio Signal FM, which cited a relative of the journalist. CPJ was unable to confirm further details about the kidnapping, and messages to Peguy did not receive an immediate response.
“We are very concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Haiti and its impact on everyone in the country, including the journalists trying to keep the public informed,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Those holding journalist Lucien Jura must release him immediately. Journalists should not be used as pawns.”
Jura is an independent commentator on current events and is considered to be one of the country’s most prominent journalists. CPJ was not able to confirm whether his work was related to his kidnapping.
Jura began his journalism career at the prominent television station Télémax and Radio Signal FM, according to Peguy’s post. Jura later served as presidential spokesman during the administration of Michel Martelly and Jovenel Moïse. Jura also published a book in 2000 about his experience in public service.
The kidnapping came amid weeks of chaos and violence in Haiti as police clashed with armed gangs seeking to consolidate their power, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry earlier this month. Haiti has not had a president since the assassination of Moïse in 2021.
Several reporters have been injured while reporting on the latest violence, including freelancer Jean Marc Jean, who lost an eye when he was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by police.
At least six Haitian journalists have been murdered in direct reprisal for their work since Moise’s assassination. CPJ has also documented half a dozen kidnappings of journalists in recent months. Haiti was ranked as the world’s third-worst nation in CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index, which measures where killers of journalists are most likely to go unpunished.
]]>An unidentified gunman on a motorcycle shot and killed Oliveira outside his offices at Rádio Jornal 820 AM, where he hosted a sports program, on July 5, 2012.
The injunction cancels all legal proceedings in the case after 2015, including the 2022 jury conviction of four men in Goiânia, the capital of the state of Goiás, where the journalist was murdered. Among the convicted were Maurício Borges Sampaio, a businessman and current president of Atlético Clube Goianiense, and Ademá Figueredo, a military police officer still on active duty.
]]>On Monday, DW’s Spanish-language TV channel posted a video on X calling Venezuela “the world’s second most corrupt country” and reporting that high-ranking politicians were allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking, extortion, and illegal gold mining.
In response, Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez accused DW of “promoting hatred” and defaming Venezuela. On Monday evening, the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) said DW was no longer available on the country’s two main cable distributors, Supercable and SimpleTV. On his weekly TV program that day, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, justified taking DW off the air by calling it a “Nazi” broadcaster.
“By taking DW off the air over a critical report, the Venezuelan government is once again demonstrating its overt hostility to press freedom in the country,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “Venezuelans have a right to information, especially information that holds the powerful to account. Venezuela’s government must allow DW to return to the air.”
In a statement Tuesday, DW Director General Peter Limbourg said, “We urgently call on the Venezuelan government to once again ensure the distribution of the Spanish language DW television channel as quickly as possible. This restriction of DW’s broadcast is a serious encroachment on the freedom of the people in Venezuela to find independent information themselves.”
Amid government censorship of local media, international TV stations had been an important source of independent news coverage for Venezuelans, Carlos Correa, director of the Caracas-based press freedom group Espacio Público, told CPJ. However, since 2010 at least 14 channels, including CNN and news stations from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and other countries, have been taken off the air, according to the SNTP. The union noted that DW transmissions were also briefly blocked in 2019 following the station’s coverage of anti-Maduro protests.
The blockage of DW comes amid a wider government crackdown on dissent, including the arrest last month of a prominent critic of Venezuela’s powerful military and the expulsion of a United Nations human rights agency, as the country gears up for the scheduled July 28 presidential election, in which Maduro is seeking another six-year term.
CPJ’s calls to Venezuela’s Communications Ministry and Maduro’s press office went unanswered.
]]>Here is CPJ’s briefing on the legal battle to extradite Assange, the charges he would face in the U.S., and why his prosecution is worrying for journalists in the U.S. and internationally.
What are the charges against Assange?
The 18 indictments against Assange stem from WikiLeaks’ obtainment and publication in 2010 of some 400,000 classified U.S. military documents relating to its involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These leaks— the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history—included a video showing the 2007 killing in Iraq of two Reuters journalists by a U.S. military airstrike.
Prosecutors allege that Assange unlawfully published the names of classified sources and conspired with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain classified information.
Manning was convicted in 2013 on espionage charges and served seven years in a military prison before President Barack Obama commuted the remainder of her sentence in 2017. Manning was again jailed in 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and freed in 2020, as the judge said her detention was no longer serving “any coercive purpose.”
Seventeen of the charges against Assange are under the 1917 Espionage Act, which has been increasingly used by the Department of Justice to prosecute whistleblowers, CPJ has documented. The other charge, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is that Assange “encouraged” Manning to leak classified information.
If extradited and convicted in the U.S., Assange’s lawyers have said that he faces up to 175 years in prison, although U.S. prosecutors have said the sentence would be much shorter.
When did the U.S. government indict Assange?
The Justice Department in April 2019 unsealed an indictment accusing Assange of computer hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In May 2019, Assange was indicted on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for his role in obtaining and publishing classified U.S. government material. In June 2020, the U.S. filed a superseding indictment against Assange that broadened the scope of the computer hacking charges.
While the leaks in question in these indictments were published while President Barack Obama was in office, his Justice Department notably declined to file charges against Assange due what it termed a “New York Times problem”—namely if it indicted Assange, a legal pathway would be created for the Justice Department to prosecute The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and other media outlets that published the classified logs. This could allow for the prosecution of any journalists who publish leaked documents.
What’s at stake for journalism?
CPJ has long spoken out against the prosecution of Assange and the implications for press freedom globally, and repeatedly called for the charges to be dropped, including in a 2010 letter to Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.
While Assange’s controversial diplomatic and military leaks have named and endangered vulnerable journalists, U.S. prosecution efforts have been described as “holding a gun to the head of investigative journalism.”
The arguments used in the indictments against Assange could establish a legal pathway for the prosecution of journalists and severely weaken the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press. Journalists’ right to report on matters of public interest without fear of censorship or retribution could be harmed.
If Assange were found guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it could facilitate the criminalization of investigative journalists’ interactions with their sources.
If Assange is extradited and prosecuted in the U.S. under the Espionage Act, it would allow the U.S. government to extradite any publisher of classified information from any country with which the U.S. has an extradition agreement. It would set a harmful precedent for governments worldwide, establishing a framework whereby states can pursue journalists through the courts, no matter where they are located.
Furthermore, the prosecution of Assange in the U.S. would be a gift to authoritarian leaders who could cite Washington’s example the next time they wanted to jail an irksome journalist or publisher.
How did Assange end up in the U.K.?
Assange sought asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador in London in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden where he was wanted for questioning on allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he denied. Assange’s legal team feared he would be handed over for onward extradition to the U.S. for prosecution.
Assange’s lawyers told the British High Court this month that the Trump administration planned to kidnap or kill Assange to “sustain impunity for US officials in respect of the torture/war crimes committed in its infamous ‘war on terror’…”
After falling out with the Ecuadorian government, Assange was evicted from the country’s embassy in April 2019, arrested by the British police for skipping bail, and imprisoned, pending the conclusion of the U.S. extradition case.
What’s next?
The British High Court is not expected to rule on Assange’s final application to appeal until March at the earliest.
If successful, Assange will be allowed to appeal on the grounds that his extradition would be a breach of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K., which prohibits doing so for political offences.
If Assange loses at the High Court, he will have 28 days to file an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, one of his lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, said during a briefing on the case. If Assange was granted provisional measures, it would prevent the U.K. from extraditing him until a ruling from the ECHR.
]]>Editor’s note: The letter was updated to correct the name of the district attorney.
]]>Morin was in the encampment conducting interviews for a story about the Indigenous-led camp, which was targeted for demolition by the city of Edmonton, where 58% of the unhoused population is Indigenous, according to Ricochet.
While Morin was speaking with individuals in the encampment, police cordoned off the perimeter, Ricochet reported. In an article Morin wrote for Ricochet about her arrest, she recounted that police asked her to leave, and she told them that she had a right to be there as a journalist.
Morin was then handcuffed and placed in a police vehicle before being taken to police headquarters. Morin wrote that she was then searched by a female officer and held in a cell for five hours. While in detention, she was allowed to call for her daughter to be picked up and to contact her editor to arrange for a lawyer.
Morin wrote that she was charged with obstruction upon her release and was given a court summons for February 1. On that day, Morin was photographed and fingerprinted, the Guardian reported. Morin wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that her next court date is March 1.
If convicted, Morin could face up to two years in prison under Canada’s criminal code.
Morin was arrested in a media exclusion zone, where police can limit public access and where journalists have had trouble reporting in recent years. Canadian courts in two provinces have ruled that journalists are allowed to report in exclusion zones with very narrow exceptions.
An award-winning journalist and author, Morin has reported on missing Indigenous women and girls in Canada and the environmental impact of oil sands extraction on Indigenous communities.
The Edmonton Police media relations department said that they would not be commenting at this time since the matter is currently before the courts.
]]>The coalition, which included Article 19 Mexico and Central America, Protection International Mesoamerica, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP), and the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES), collaborated with civil society groups and journalists to address pressing challenges faced by the press during the pivotal electoral period.
On February 1, the coalition announced the mission to El Salvador and called upon the government to foster an environment conducive to journalistic endeavors, safeguard citizen’s right to be informed, and reinforce the media’s role in strengthening democracy. Read the full statement here.
On February 5, after the elections, the coalition expressed concern that the government used emergency measures to control information and stigmatize critical media during the elections and highlighted instances of self-censorship and other obstacles faced by journalists. Read the full statement here.
]]>The investigation was the result of a complaint filed by the Mato Grosso state governor, Mauro Mendes, in connection to two articles about a local judge’s alleged illicit conversations with miners under investigation for the use of illegal mercury.
The statement said, “It is incompatible with the Brazilian constitutional protection of the right to freedom of the press for a criminal instrument to be used against journalists, especially in the case of representation for an offense against honor.”
Read the full statement here.
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