Former Haitian president Jean-Claude Duvalier dies

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 there 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.

I want to take this opportunity to express, one more time, my deep sadness to those countrymen who feel, rightly, that they were victims of my government.

Jean-Claude Duvalier

Duvalier, came to power when he was just 19 years old, after the death of his father Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. 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 government revenue.

Baby Doc Americas