Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who ruled the impoverished Caribbean nation from 1971 until his ouster in 1986, died Saturday of a heart attack, officials here said. He was 63. The death of Duvalier, who returned to Haiti in 2011 after 25 years of exile, was announced by the nation's health minister, Florence Guillaume Duperval.
"The family phoned us this morning asking us to send a (medical) helicopter," as the former dictator appeared be suffering a heart attack, she told AFP. "They tried to administer first aid to him on the scene, but he died" a short time later, Duperval said. Duvalier came to power when he was just 19 years old, after the death of his father Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
For a decade-and-a-half, the then-portly, boyish-looking Duvalier ruled as Haiti's self-proclaimed "president for life" until he was forced into exile in a popular uprising, as pro-democracy forces rallied in the streets amid international condemnation of the rampant human rights abuses during his regime. Like his father, Baby Doc came to rule Haiti with an iron fist - barring opposition, clamping down on dissidents, rubber-stamping his own laws and pocketing government revenue.
And like his ruthless father, he also made liberal use of the dreaded Tonton Macoutes, a secret police force loyal to the Duvalier family. The notorious sunglass-toting Macoutes terrorised Haitians, arresting, torturing untold numbers of political opponents, thousands of whom vanished without ever being accounted for.
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