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Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who ruled the impoverished Caribbean nation from 1971 until his oustnig in 1986, has died of a heart attack at his home.
The death of 63-year-old Duvalier, who returned to Haiti in 2011 after 25 years of exile, was announced by the nation's health minister, Florence Guillaume Duperval.
The self-proclaimed "president for life", Duvalier came to power when he was just 19, after the death of his father Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, becoming the world's youngest president.
Like his father, he came to rule the nation with an iron fist, barring opposition, clamping down on dissidents, rubber-stamping his own laws and pocketing state revenue.
He also made liberal use of the dreaded Tonton Macoutes, a secret police force loyal to the Duvalier family. The Tonton Macoutes were accused of kidnapping, torturing and killing up to 30,000 suspected opponents during the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1986 a popular uprising swept across Haiti and he fled with his wife to France, where he remained for 25 years.
In 2007, Duvalier called on Haitians to forgive him for "mistakes" committed during his rule, even as the government in power at the time insisted he face trial.
He had said his return in 2011 to a Haiti levelled by a devastating earthquake a year earlier and still facing grinding poverty and widespread social turmoil, was meant as a gesture of solidarity to the stricken nation. But many suspected he came back in an effort to reclaim money he had allegedly stashed.
Others said he wanted to die in his homeland. More than 20 victims of his rule filed charges against him ranging from false imprisonment to torture.


'Baby Doc' Duvalier, ex-Haitian dictator back from exile, dies

News

World

Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who ruled the impoverished Caribbean nation from 1971 until his oustnig in 1986, has died of a heart attack at his home.
