HAITI: Murder by Beating

Barely a week after it peacefully chose a President-elect, Haiti went back to the jungle law that has ruled the island for almost a year. As losing candidate Louis Déjoie fled into hiding, vanished, vowing trouble, the ruling military junta issued a panicky decree authorizing plain citizens to shoot on sight “outlaws,” i.e., political opponents of the government. The U.S. embassy warned American citizens of the growing danger and began flying families of U.S. officials to Puerto Rico. Reason: in the growing breakdown of law and order, one U.S. citizen had already been brutally killed.

Shibley Jean Talamas, 29, who was born in Haiti to wealthy, Syrian-descended parents with U.S. citizenship, was a bear-size (6 ft. 6 in., more than 300 Ibs.) playboy who enacted a majestic Bacchus at carnival time, managed a leading soccer team and manufactured textiles. He had been educated at Virginia’s Hargrave Military Academy and the University of Texas, and was married to an Ashtabula, Ohio girl. In 24 hours last week, U.S. Citizen Talamas ran into a terrible coincidence that cost him his life and Haiti much U.S. good will.

Suspicious Police. Talamas’ ordeal began one night when his wife was in a hospital in labor with their first child. Talamas rushed into the streets at 2:30 a.m. to seek a specialist. Police arrested him because he lacked a curfew pass, released him after a few hours. The cops learned that earlier that evening three men appeared outside a gendarmery outpost near Port-au-Prince, and as a pretext to get near said they were seeking a doctor to help a woman in childbirth, then suddenly opened fire, killing four sentries. To the suspicious police, already hysterically fearful of attack by bitter-end partisans of defeated Candidate Déjoie, the similarity of the two stories seemed proof that Déjoie-backer Talamas was in cahoots with the killers. Rushing to Talamas’ house, they found a sporting rifle and two revolvers.

False Promises. To avoid arrest, Talamas fled to the U.S. embassy. But a few hours later, on the advice of U.S. embassy officials who twice received Haitian government assurances that he would not be mistreated, he surrendered to the police. Next morning, Colonel Louis Roumain, the junta’s foreign affairs chief, informed the inquiring embassy that during the night. Talamas assaulted an officer and in the “scuffle” suffered a “heart attack” and died. Accompanied by U.S. officials, three U.S. doctors examined the body, found it a mass of ugly bruises and welts, and the State Department issued the official U.S. conclusion: “Talamas died from the beating he received.”

Washington sent Haiti a note charging “murder by beating . . . particularly repugnant because repeated assurances were given that Talamas would not be mistreated.” Haiti’s only reaction was to repeat the “heart attack” story. In the hospital, where she gave birth to a daughter as her husband was dying, Shibley Talamas’ wife was at first told only that her husband was under arrest. Said she: ‘That’s all right, just as long as Shibley and I can be happy together.”