Rosemilla Petit Frère's Retention at the DCPJ: FJKL Denounces Case Slowness, but Remains Cautious
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 2 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
PORT-AU-PRINCE. — In an exclusive interview with Le Relief, Marie Yolène Gilles, Executive Director of Fondasyon Je Klere (FJKL), spoke cautiously about the case of Rosemilla Petit Frère, held at the DCPJ for nearly two weeks. For the human rights activist, this situation illustrates both the slowness and nonchalance of the Haitian justice system.
The FJKL leader, however, specified that Rosemilla Petit Frère was not officially in detention, although she is not free to move. Marie Yolène Gilles prefers to speak of retention at the DCPJ, as the charges against her have not yet been stated or clarified. “She is not in a situation of detention; she is simply being held due to minor issues in the correspondence from the Northern Police and unclear mentions in the police report from the neighboring Republic,” she emphasized.
Arrested in the Dominican Republic and handed over to Haitian authorities, Rosemilla Petit Frère is now facing health concerns. A FJKL delegation went to the DCPJ last Friday to verify whether her rights had been violated.
“We wanted to ascertain if she had access to a doctor for her treatments, which was the case,” said Marie Yolène Gilles, while calling on authorities to act swiftly to follow up on this matter. She recalled that “no one can be deprived indefinitely of their liberty without a judicial decision having been made against them.”
According to her, Ms. Petit Frère’s case cannot be dissociated from the political context. This retention appears to be a state-level settling of scores and illustrates how certain judicial cases are instrumentalized for political ends.
Without wishing to interfere, the activist believes that Petit Frère’s lawyers could file a habeas corpus petition to obtain her release. Whether it is retention or preventive detention, Rosemilla Petit Frère remains held at the Central Directorate of Judicial Police, without any formal charges against her. Her case symptomatically illustrates the abuses of the Haitian justice system.
