PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier will not get a formal state funeral, his longtime attorney said Thursday.
Duvalier, the self-designated “president-for-life” who died Saturday from an apparent heart attack, will have a “simple, private” funeral arranged by friends and family in Haiti, attorney Reynolds Georges said in an interview.
“There will be people coming from all over the country,” he said.
Georges told The Associated Press that he had been told in recent days that the government of President Michel Martelly had planned a state funeral though officials said publicly that no decision had been made.
The attorney said the government apparently changed course and decided against a public funeral for Duvalier, who presided over a regime widely acknowledged as brutal and corrupt until he was ousted by a popular uprising in 1986.