Six private lawsuits alleging human rights violations have already been filed against "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who has also been charged by prosecutors with corruption, embezzlement of millions of dollars from state funds and criminal association, but Chief Magistrate Harycidas Auguste sees more coming.
"Of course, there will be many more people presenting charges now" that Duvalier has returned from his long exile in France, Auguste told AFP.
"We can't really say for sure by when we'll stop receiving complaints. Even at the trial, if we arrive at that stage, someone may come and claim to have been a victim."
While Duvalier formally apologized to "victims of my government" and said he had returned to in his first full public statement since returning to the desperately poor nation grappling with a multi-pronged crisis, his words are unlikely to calm tensions here.
Many unanswered questions remain about his sudden return for people with vivid memories of his brutal 1971-1986 rule, which ended when Duvalier fled in disgrace after being ousted in a popular revolt.
Auguste said the government was now pursuing a dual track on Duvalier -- with the corruption, embezzlement and criminal charges on one hand, and crimes against humanity charges on the other, noting that rights groups would play a critical role in helping the prosecution make its case.
He warned that others who had a hand in Duvalier's repressive regime would also get their day in court.
"The legal action we opened is one that actually implicates Mr. Duvalier ' and consorts. That means there are other people that are going to be ' prosecuted in the same case," Auguste said.
"What the Haitian state reproached to Jean-Claude Duvalier and consorts before and after 1986, and what we reproach him today, is the issue of crimes against humanity."
Gerardo Ducos, a Haiti researcher for Amnesty International, earlier welcomed the new probe into alleged torture and killings under Preval.
"We welcome with satisfaction the beginning of investigations on crimes against humanity," Ducos said. "It's an important moment for fighting impunity."
In his statement to a room packed full of journalists, the 59-year-old Duvalier acknowledged that "thousands were cowardly assassinated, suffocated, interrogated, subjected to tire necklaces burnings; their houses, their possessions were pillaged, uprooted and torched."
He also expressed sympathy for his "millions" of supporters he left behind after his "voluntary departure from Haiti in 1986 to avoid a bloodbath and to allow a swift resolution to the political crisis."
The Caribbean nation is now steeped in yet another political crisis, with the government in limbo in the wake of tainted presidential elections, just as Haiti grapples with a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly 4,000 people and last year's devastating quake that left over 220,000 people dead and 1.3 million homeless.
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