GONAIVES, Haiti - In a landmark case billed as the trial of Haiti's coup regime, 16 former soldiers and their cohorts were found guilty Friday of a 1994 massacre of slum dwellers.
Twelve defendants - eight of them ex-soldiers - were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor. Another four defendants received prison terms of between four and nine years. Six defendants were acquitted.
Judge Napla Saintil also ruled that all the convicted men's property would be confiscated if they fail to pay $2,275 each in damages to 15 victims - an amount 10 times the average annual income in Haiti.
''Justice is a debt the state owes the citizen,'' Saintil said.
The 22 defendants had pleaded innocent to crimes ranging from criminal conspiracy to torture and murder in the massacre at Raboteau on April 22, 1994.
Another 38 people charged with masterminding the killings, who all live in exile, will be tried separately starting Monday, said Justice Minister Camille Leblanc.
They include former coup leader Raoul Cedras and his close associate Philippe Biamby, who received asylum in Panama; former Port-au-Prince police chief Michel Francois, who is in Honduras; and paramilitary leader Emmanuel ''Toto'' Constant, who lives in New York City.
The trial, which began Sept. 29, ''revealed the role of the army high command in the massacre. In this sense, it was the trial of the coup d'etat'' regime, Leblanc said.
In a dawn raid on Raboteau, a seaside shantytown of Gonaives city, soldiers and their paramilitary thugs burst into dozens of homes, beating and arresting people, including the elderly and children.
Some were forced to lie in open sewers. Those who fled to the sea were shot. No one knows how many people were killed because soldiers prevented the victims' families from retrieving bodies.
Witnesses said dogs ate some bodies, and others were washed out to sea. International pathologists told the court they could only identify the bodies of three victims.
The Raboteau slayings were part of a series of attacks undertaken to break support for former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a charismatic slum priest who became the Caribbean country's first democratically elected leader in 1991.
Soldiers and their thugs killed at least 3,000 people and maimed thousands more before President Clinton sent in 20,000 troops in 1994 to end the bloodshed and halt an exodus of boat people to Florida.
Aristide was restored and the army was abolished. Aristide was succeeded by his hand-picked successor, President Rene Preval.
Under both men, only a handful of soldiers and militiamen have been tried for coup-related crimes and no more than two or three have been convicted.
It took more than three years for Haiti's inefficient judicial system to prepare the Raboteau case.
''This trial is one more successful step in our struggle against impunity,'' Leblanc said in an interview.
The most infamous of those convicted Friday are former Capt. Castera Cenafils, 47, and paramilitary leader Jean Pierre Tatoune, 43. Both were sentenced to life at hard labor.
Cenafils, who headed the commandos, said he was searching for armed civilians who had allegedly attacked an army outpost. Only one or two people were killed, he said.
But the court heard testimony that no trace of bullets was found on the outpost walls.
