Aristide interviewed about unsolved killing by Haitian judge

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 9 (UPI) -- Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide met with a judge investigating the killing of journalist Jean Dominique in 2000, the victim's wife said.

In a rare public appearance, Aristide drew a crowd of thousands of Haitians, who followed his motorcade around as he made his way to a three-hour meeting with Judge Yvickel Dabresil Wednesday, The Miami Herald reported.

Dabresil has been charged with finding the "intellectual author" behind Dominique's murder. Dominique was shot and killed in April 2000 outside Haiti Inter, the radio station he owned and operated in Port-au-Prince.

"It has been a long, bloody and tortuous investigation but I feel there is now a light at the end of the tunnel. Will we ever find justice? I don't know but I think we have moved forward," said Dominique's wife, Michele Montas.

"I hope this testimony and other crucial ones the judge has gathered in the last few months will allow the truth to finally come out on who engineered, planned the assassination and paid for the crime," she said.

Maryse Narcisse, Aristide's spokeswoman, decline to say what was discussed between the former president and Dabresil.

"Jean-Dominique was a friend, a brother to him," Narcisse said of Aristide. "He believes that as a citizen when the justice summons him, it is his duty to collaborate ... Today was an occasion for him to exercise his right as a citizen by being present in court."