12613: Article: Haiti Police Search for Escapees (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <dgcraig@att.net>


Haiti Police Search for Escapees
August 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) -- Police searched cars and buses
leaving this city in northwestern Haiti Saturday for 159
prisoners who escaped after gunmen drove a tractor through
the wall of a prison to free a jailed political activist.

Police fled Gonaives after the jailbreak Friday, and
residents locked themselves in their homes as automatic
gunfire rang in the streets. People burned down city hall
and the courthouse, and authorities acknowledged they had
lost control of the town.

On Saturday, police returned with reinforcements and
restored calm. Officers were patrolling the streets and
searching vehicles for escaped prisoners on the southbound
highway from Gonaives to Port-au-Prince, about 60 miles
away. Gonaives has about 200,000 people.

Government officials said the purpose of the prison assault
was to free Amiot Metayer, a former ally of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide who turned against the president
after he was jailed July 2 on charges of burning down
houses of a rival gang. He blamed Aristide for his arrest.

Metayer was seen Friday parading through Gonaives with his
supporters, an armed group calling themselves the Cannibal
Army.

His supporters had been demanding his release for weeks,
blocking traffic with flaming tire barricades and setting
fire to the Customs House in Gonaives on July 8.

The violence and initial police abandonment of Gonaives was
another indication of the growing chaos enveloping the
hemisphere's poorest nation, mired in a two-year political
impasse over fraudulent elections that has blocked
international aid.

"Disorder has taken possession of the country," human
rights advocate and former culture minister Jean-Claude
Bajeux said Friday.

The gunmen used a stolen tractor to ram their way through
the prison wall, said Clifford Larose, director of Haiti's
prison system. One prisoner was shot and killed inside the
jail by the attackers.

Larose said 159 of the 221 inmates got away. They were not
wearing prison uniforms, allowing them to quickly blend in
with the population, authorities said.

According to an Organization of American States report,
Metayer had participated in past attacks on Aristide's
opponents, including a Dec. 17 assault on the residence of
politician Luc Mesadieu in Gonaives -- a day when Aristide
supporters all over Haiti attacked opposition offices and
homes.

Mesadieu's assistant, Ramy Daran, was doused with gasoline
and burned to death. Mesadieu said he saw Metayer giving
the order to kill Daran.

At least 10 people died in that day's violence, which
Aristide claims was sparked by an attempt to overthrow the
government and assassinate him. But the OAS has disagreed
with that explanation, lending support to opposition claims
the Dec. 17 coup was staged. The opposition says it was a
pretext to clamp down on dissidents.

Ironically, among the prisoners who broke free Friday were
former soldiers convicted in the 1994 killings of suspected
pro-Aristide civilians in Gonaives' seaside shantytown of
Raboteau, in a hunt for Metayer.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti-Jailbreak.html?ex=1029451317&ei=1&en=0b1b247091051679
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company