Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier dies from heart attack at home near Port-au-Prince

Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier, the country's self-proclaimed 'president for life', died today Saturday Oct 04,2014 of a heart attack.

Mr Duvalier ruled the impoverished Caribbean country with brutality and corruption for nearly 15 years before being overthrown in 1986, when he went into exile in France. 

His attorney Reynold George said the 63-year-old former leader died at his home in the hills above Port-au-Prince. 

He had lived in the country since 2011, when he returned declaring that he would help in the reconstruction of Haiti - whose cities were heavily damaged in an earthquake the year before.

Jean-Claude was the son of Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, a medical doctor-turned-dictator who ruled the country from 1957 to 1971.

Papa Doc promoted 'Noirisme', a movement that sought to highlight Haiti's African roots over its European ones while uniting the black majority against a mulatto elite in a country divided by class and colour.

Baby Doc was a 19-year-old chubby playboy when he ‘inherited’ the country - one of the world's poorest - from his despotic father after he died suddenly of an illness in 1971.

Francois Duvalier practised voodoo and used his sinister secret civilian militia - the machete-wielding Tonton Macoute - to murder thousands and terrorise the population. 

His son continued the oppressive regime and hundreds of political opponents were either executed or simply disappeared.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch estimated that up to 30,000 Haitians were killed, many by execution, under the regime of the two Duvaliers, which lasted nearly three decades