The former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as Baby Doc, has died of a heart attack aged 63.

The ex-president’s lawyer, Reynold Georges, said he died at home in Port-au-Prince of a heart attack on Saturday.

After inheriting power from his father in 1971 when aged 19, Duvalier fled into exile in 1986 after a popular uprising.

After 25 years in exile in France, Duvalier returned to his Caribbean homeland in January 2011 and was briefly detained on charges of corruption, theft and misappropriation of funds.

A Haitian court ruled in February that Duvalier could be charged with crimes against humanity under international law, and that he could also be held responsible for abuses committed by the army and paramilitary forces under his rule.

Duvlier consistently denied any responsibility for abuses committed while he was in office.

It was a “shame” Duvalier died before he could be put on trial, said Reed Brody of New York-based Human Rights Watch, who helped Duvalier’s victims build the criminal case.

“Duvalier’s death deprives Haitians of what could have been the most important human rights trial in the country’s history,” he added.

Under Duvalier, “hundreds of political prisoners held in a network of prisons died from mistreatment or were victims of extrajudicial killings”, said Brody.

“Duvalier’s government repeatedly closed independent newspapers and radio stations. Journalists were beaten, in some cases tortured, jailed, and forced to leave the country.”

The dictator, who called himself “president for life”, was notorious for failing to address the poverty and illiteracy of Haitians, while he and his friends indulged in a luxurious lifestyle.

An introvert who shunned public appearances, Duvalier relied on terror in the style of his father, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, a former country doctor who employed paramilitary secret police agents and exploited popular superstitions surrounding the native voodoo religion.

Duvalier, born on 3 July 1951, lived at the centre of power from the age of five, when his father won national elections in the former French slave colony and first independent black state in the Americas.

In May 1980 he married Michelle Bennett, a young divorcee, in a union seen as improving Duvalier’s relations with the Creole middle class disaffected by Papa Doc’s heavy hand and sinister ways.

The younger Duvalier suppressed all effective opposition during his 15-year term until his overthrow.

As his problems grew he sought to improve his international image by relaxing his iron fist, but opponents continued to be arrested, often ending up in exile.

Bennett became a lightning rod for criticism due to her regular shopping expeditions to the most expensive shops in Europe, seemingly contemptuous of the poverty outside the iron gates of Haiti’s imposing presidential palace in central Port-au-Prince.

In 1983 Duvalier welcomed Pope John Paul II to the island, although the pontiff declared that Haitians lacked “everything that permits a truly human existence”.

His dramatic fall from power came after two months of widespread demonstrations and the withdrawal of support for his regime by the US, which helped him escape.

He sought refuge in France, leaving behind jubilant Haitians dancing in the street.

Soon after he returned to Haiti in 2011, taking up residence in a villa in an affluent suburb in the hills above Port-au-Prince, Duvalier issued a brief apology to victims of his government.

The corruption and human rights charges he faced after his return from exile were closely watched by international observers who considered it an important test of Haiti’s weak justice system after decades of dictatorship, military rule and economic mayhem.

Duvalier was alleged by his victims to have had a hand in at least a dozen of the most notorious cases involving extrajudicial killings and detention of political prisoners.

He was also alleged to have fled Haiti with more than $100m (£60m) stashed in European bank accounts in 1986.