Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier died of a heart attack Saturday at his home in Port-au-Prince, the New York Times reports. He was 63.
Michel J. Martelly, the president of Haiti, announced the death in a post on Twitter.
He was the son of François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, the feared dictator, who ruled the poor nation from 1957 to 1971. Baby Doc rose to power at 19 after his father’s death, presiding over a dynasty that endured about “three decades and was marked by the family’s harsh repression of its opponents, with the help of a special police unit known as the Tontons Macoute,” the Times notes.
He allegedly used Haiti’s treasury like a personal account and lived largely off ill-gotten gains over the years, the report says.
Read more at the New York Times.