(4 Oct 2014) Jean-Claude-Duvalier, the self-proclaimed "president for life" of Haiti whose corrupt and brutal regime sparked a popular uprising that sent him into a 25-year exile, died on Saturday of a heart attack, according to his lawyer.
The 63-year-old ex-leader died at a private residence in Port-au-Prince where he had been staying, Reynold Georges said.
Duvalier, looking somewhat frail, made a surprise return to Haiti in 2011, allowing victims of his regime to pursue legal claims against him and prompting some old allies to rally around him.
In the end, the once-feared dictator known as "Baby Doc" spent his final years quietly in the leafy hills above the Haitian capital.
Duvalier was the son of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a medical doctor-turned-dictator who promoted "Noirisme," a movement that sought to highlight Haiti's African roots over its European ones while uniting the black majority against a mulatto elite in a country divided by class and colour.
The regimes of both leaders tortured and killed political opponents and relied on a dreaded civilian militia known as the Tonton Macoutes.
In 1971, Francois Duvalier suddenly died of an illness after naming his son to succeed him. At 19, Jean-Claude Duvalier became the world's youngest president.
The son was regarded as a lacklustre student at a prestigious private Catholic school in the capital but his teachers gave him passing grades anyway to avoid fury from the National Palace, according to "Written in Blood", a history of the country by Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl.
Jean-Claude Duvalier ruled for 15 years, his administration seen as less violent and repressive than his father's. Echoes of press freedom and personal criticism, never tolerated under his father, emerged - sporadically - because of international pressure.
Still, human rights groups documented abuses and political persecution. A trio of prisons known as the "Triangle of Death," which included the much-feared Fort Dimanche for long-term inmates, symbolised the brutality of his regime.
Since his return, victims of the regime have testified in a criminal investigation of human rights abuses during his 15-year reign but the case has moved fitfully and there had been few signs of progress in recent months.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch estimated that up to 30,000 Haitians were killed, many by execution, under the regime of the two Duvaliers.
As Haiti's living conditions deteriorated, Pope John-Paul II made a visit in 1983 and famously declared: "Things must change."
Three years later, they did. A popular uprising swept across Haiti, and Duvalier and his wife boarded a US government C-141 for France.
On January 16, 2011, Duvalier made his surprise return. He said he wanted to help in the reconstruction of Haiti, whose capital and outlying cities were heavily damaged in a magnitude-7.0 earthquake the year before.
But many suspected he came back in an effort to reclaim money he had allegedly stashed. Others said he merely wanted to die in his homeland.
Despite the occasional stay in the hospital, Duvalier seemed to enjoy his new life back home and was free to roam the capital.
He was spotted attending government ceremonies, dining with friends in several high-end restaurants and avoided jail time.
In 2013 he began renovating an old house that Roy said had been destroyed in the wake of his 1986 ousting.
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