12617: Haitian Chief Must Quit, Escapee Says

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MaryEllen Sanok <potteryrn@yahoo.com>

Haiti Chief Must Quit, Escapee Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Filed at 11:34 a.m. ET


GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) -- Families walked to church
Sunday as calm settled on the streets of this Haitian
port city, two days after gunmen drove a tractor
through a prison wall and unleashed 159 inmates,
including a local political activist.

None of the escaped convicts was reported captured,
and no police were on the streets Sunday.

Many people blamed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
government for the chaos.

``We don't like disorder, but Aristide is to blame.
I'm sorry I voted for him. He's given street thugs a
free hand,'' Smith Auguste, a 21-year-old unemployed
man, said Saturday.

Many residents in the dusty streets of Gonaives, a
west-coast city of 200,000 people, complained they
have no electricity, few jobs and little hope.

Escaped activist Amiot Metayer accused Aristide of
wrongly putting him behind bars and demanded the
resignation of the president, a former ally.

About 100 supporters of Metayer led a reporter to the
activist in his shantytown stronghold on Saturday,
chanting: ``Down with Aristide!''

``The future of Haiti is a Haiti without Aristide,''
Metayer told The Associated Press in a tin-walled
room. ``Aristide should resign.'' Thirty of his
militants from the self-styled Cannibal Army stood
guard, some carrying pistols and submachine guns.

The latest violence and apparent inability of police
to react is 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.

Police fled the city after the jailbreak, then
returned Saturday in small numbers. But none dared
approach Metayer's stronghold in the Gonaives
shantytown of Raboteau.

Only charred ruins remain where people set fire to the
courthouse and city hall on Friday, after the
jailbreak.

Metayer turned against Aristide after he was jailed
July 2 on charges of burning down houses of a rival
gang. The activist says he is innocent.

``I suffered for the cause of democracy, and Aristide
ordered my arrest,'' said Metayer, dressed in black
with a red bandanna around his neck.

According to an Organization of American States
report, Metayer participated in past attacks on
Aristide opponents, including an assault on the home
of politician Luc Mesadieu on Dec. 17. After an armed
attack on the country's National Palace that day,
Aristide supporters attacked opposition offices and
homes.

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

The 38-year-old activist denied it, saying although he
saw Daran die, ``I came too late to save him. I never
hurt anybody in my life.''

At least 10 people died in the Dec. 17 violence, which
Aristide claims was a coup attempt. The opposition
claims it was staged as a pretext to clamp down on
dissent.

Police fruitlessly searched cars and buses for escaped
prisoners on the southbound highway from Gonaives to
Port-au-Prince, about 60 miles away.

The gunmen used a stolen tractor to ram the prison
wall, freeing 159 of the 221 inmates, said Clifford
Larose, director of Haiti's prison system. One
prisoner was shot and killed by the attackers.

Metayer's supporters had been demanding his release
for week. In a handwritten list of demands, they urged
the creation of an interim government, new elections
by November 2003 and raising wages of police and other
workers. Metayer also said he wants safe passage to
Orlando, Fla., where his mother and two daughters are
staying.

Government officials didn't immediately respond to the
demands.


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