Mass funeral held for 20 Haitians who died in dismal prison

Port-au-Prince (Haiti): Relatives wailed in grief or stared stoically as flowers were placed on 20 caskets at a mass funeral for the latest group of inmates who died miserably in Haiti’s largest prison, most without ever having been convicted of any crime.

Marie Lumane Laurore broke into piercing screams as she collapsed in a church pew before the coffin of her son, Eddy.

The 30-year-old inmate fell ill with tuberculosis and



severe anemia while he was jailed in Haiti’s filthy and overcrowded National Penitentiary on a rape charge. “Jesus, give me back my son! He was my only boy,” she sobbed, banging her fists against a wooden pew in a Catholic church in downtown Port-au-Prince.

Emotions that had been dammed up, in some cases for years, over their loved ones’ lengthy detentions broke in a crescendo of grief as a priest called out the names of the dead.