Me Pierre Michel Brunache, the Minister of Justice and Public Security recalls that at the end of the year generally he head of state pardons always some condemned and that the President Michel Martelly intended this year respect this tradition.

"...generally at the end of the year, the President always pardons some condemned which are either at the end of their sentence either for good behavior while incarcerated. Again this year, the President of the Republic want to respect this tradition.

We tackled the task and we asked to the 18 jurisdictions of the country, to send us a list with the files and the President will select from this list, which of them will be the lucky recipients of the presidential pardon [...]

...the criteria is simple and concerns most often those convicted those convicted of misdemeanors or convicts, even in matters of crime, at the end of their sentence [...] the number of prisoners to pardon is left to the discretion of the President.

I am currently accumulate for the moment the lists sent to me. There is a Commission in the Ministry working on it, then we will send the list to the Presidency, but it is at the discretion of the President of the Republic or his team to know exactly how many prisoners are concerned [...]

...in each jurisdiction, the deans and the Government Commissioners are working together to screen those who might potentially benefit from the presidential pardon [...] we have 18 jurisdictions, if you take 10 per jurisdiction, it's already 180 and if we add the metropolitan area, the jurisdictions of Port-au-Prince, of Croix-des-Bouquets and Petit-Goâve, we can easily arrive at a preselected list of nearly 200 detainees, but it will belong to the President of the Republic to decide if it's only 10 or 20 who will get through this..."

S/ HaitiLibre