14279: Haitian Times: Government Fails to Capture Jean Tatoun

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Haitian Times <publisher@haitiantimes.com>


Government Fails to Capture Jean Tatoun

By Macollvie Jean-François & Anna Wardenburg-Ferdinand
Haitian Times Staff

	The Haitian government is having a hard time keeping track of its convicted
criminals. About six months ago, a truck rammed into a Gonaives prison and
helped to free 150 inmates, including a rival of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. And a recent plan to capture the dissident failed, officials said.
	A Haitian National Palace plan to apprehend escaped convict and rebel army
leader Jean Pierre Baptiste, known as Jean Tatoun, fell apart when a Haitian
Coast Guard officer released three men being used to lure Baptiste into
custody.
	The Palace paid an informant thousands of U.S. dollars to get Baptiste onto
a boat so SWAT and CIMO forces could seize him once at sea, according to a
former Supervising Officer Obson Cherichel and government officials.
	Léon Charles, commissioner at the base, said the DCPA’s Frantz Gabriel used
the base’s resources as part of the special mission to kidnap Baptiste. The
plan hit a snag when Baptiste did not get on board.
	And the operation was foiled after Cherichel, who was stationed at a
Bizoton Garde de Cotes base, released three men who were pivotal in getting
the escaped convict.
	Cherichel has been in hiding since, with the help of the National Coalition
for Haitian Rights, which also got in touch with his fiancée, Kettlie
Buessereth, and arranged their passage to the United States via the
Dominican Republic. Cherichel said family members left in Haiti have been
under watch and feel threatened; he hopes that by making the story public,
anyone with harmful intentions towards him and his family would back off.
	The interview with Cherichel was coordinated with the National Coalition
for Haitian Rights. Charles said he had to come forward to distance any
connection between himself and the Haitian Coast Guard, and Cherichel’s
action because Cherichel did it for his advantage.
	Haitian government officials said they are authorized to use any means to
bring Baptiste back into custody, and that Cherichel liberated the prisoners
so that he would have a valid reason to seek political asylum in the United
States.
	According to Cherichel, an informant named Alexandre “Canal de Vent” Pierre
was contracted to entrap Baptiste by promising to bring him to
Providenciales, an island near Haiti that is part of the Turks and Caicos
chain.
	“Canal de Vent told the prisoners that he was working for the president to
help him capture Jean Tatoun, Amiot Metayer and their partisans,” Cherichel
said from a location in the United States. “[Canal de Vent] had already
received $6,000 of $12,000 promised to him. If he didn’t find anyone, he
would have to give back the money.”
	But the plan fell apart. Canal de Vent did not come in direct contact with
Baptiste, but sent word to him proposing a trip to Providenciales with
Baptiste’s cousin, Dieubon Beaubrun. Baptiste told Beaubrun to go see
whether the proposal was legitimate and to send word about the island.
Beaubrun was in the course of testing the waters, as it were, when he was
captured in Baptiste’s place along with two fishermen.
	Baptiste, a married father of five, was involved in the demonstrations
leading to the ouster of President Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. He gained a
reputation for being revolutionary and mobilized many supporters. His Sèkèy
Army, Creole for Coffin, operates in Gonaives.
	After the downfall of Duvalier, he worked with FRAPH, a controversial
group, which became an appendage to the army’s repression when Aristide was
forced from power by a coup d'etat in 1991.
	The 1994 massacre occurred when the army and FRAPH members blocked off the
ocean escape route of Raboteau’s residents, who were calling for Aristide’s
return. The number of people killed was never confirmed, but estimates range
from six to 15; and at least 200 were tortured.
	Baptiste was convicted in 2000 along with FRAPH members and sentenced to
life in prison.
Raboteau residents tore down the prison wall to free Amiot “Cubain” Metayer,
their folk hero, Baptiste came tumbling out with him. Though the two were
initially photographed embracing and denouncing Aristide, Metayer returned
to Lavalas, and Baptiste joined the opposition movement demanding for the
departure of Aristide.
	Armed groups led by Metayer have clashed with Baptiste’s left several
people injured. Metayer is said to have control of the town, and police
unable approach him. But Baptiste is eluding police by changing locales
nightly.
	The Jean Tatoun Freedom Page on the Web has called for his freedom.
	The recounts of Cherichel and Charles demonstrate the lengths that the
government will go to get him.
	Ira Kurzban, a spokesman for the Aristide administration, said he is more
concerned about the United States granting a visa to Cherichel, after he
admitted foiling a government operation than about the failure of the
mission.
“There have been a lot of wild allegations by people trying to get political
asylum,” said Kurzban, a Miami lawyer. "There is a question about as to how
someone who admits disrupting an operation to arrest a convicted known felon
[can get a visa]. How could someone like that get a visa?"
Cherichel’s role emerged in late September, while performing the duties of
supervisor at the Coast Guard base at Bizoton, an area outside of
Port-au-Prince, the capital.
On Sept. 22, Cherichel said, Charles received a call from the National
Palace. He left later that day with a SWAT crew for Gonaives. The SWAT
outfit returned that that afternoon with six male prisoners, without telling
Cherichel the charges against them nor the reason they had not been taken to
a regular police station.
“They told us to press on the other three guys,” Cherichel said, referring
to Beaubrun, and fishermen Pierre Gasner and Chenel St-Luc. He said that
“pressing” means to treat them harshly.
Since the base does not have a holding cell, Cherichel kept them in an
office, where he could keep an eye on them. A law school graduate, Cherichel
asked questions to determine the charges. But he received the same response
to all queries: it’s by order of the National Palace.
Gabriel and CIMO Inspector Alexandre Gregory visited the prisoners again
five days after their arrival and released Alexandre Pierre, Neptune
Presendieu and Otoniel Philippe, with whom the informant hired to help him
set the trap.
“As soon as we found Jean Tatoun, we were going to let them go. The
fishermen had nothing to do with [the jailbreak],” said Charles, who still
occupies his post in Port-au-Prince. “I called Gabriel, he said ‘OK, we lost
Jean Tatoun, but hold on to these men, or else we will lose the operation.
We’ll make a second plan: We’ll make the cousin make a cassette, they will
send a letter to the family.”
Charles said they fed the men - Beaubrun and fishermen, Gasner and St-Luc -
gave them a fan, a television and allowed them to take baths.
As the days passed, Cherichel said he became more intrigued by the secrecy
and resolves to protect the three men, on whom a police check revealed no
previous crimes. Cherichel said St-Luc came down with a fever and refused to
eat during some of those days.
To salvage the plan, Gregory and Gabriel insisted that Beaubrun and the
others make a cassette and write letters, telling their families that they
had reached Providenciales and were in good health. Charles said the men
were paid for their trouble.
The deceptive tape raised red flags for Cherichel, pushing him to ask Coast
Guard Inspector Lambert Rosemond for details. Rosemond told him that,
indeed, the plan was under the National Palace jurisdiction, and that he
believed the prisoners would not live much longer.
On the morning of Oct. 9, about 17 days after the men’s arrival, Cherichel
learned that the National Palace was coming for the men that night.
“I was sure that they were going to kill them that night,” Cherichel said.
Convinced that their demise was near, Cherichel said he asked an officer
holding the keys for the storage room. “I told him I was going to have the
guys bathe.”
Once he got the key, Cherichel looked around, saw that no one was
suspicious. He said, “I told the guys, ‘figure out a way to save yourselves.
’”
The men, who were not familiar with Port-au-Prince and told Cherichel that
they did not know where to head, jumped over the Coast Guard wall, spreading
in different directions to avoid capture. Beaubrun narrated his ordeal on a
radio station days later.
Charles said the men were never going to be killed, but rather, that the
night operation Cherichel heard mention of was referring to Gabriel and
Gregory's second attempt to go to Gonaives, to try to get Baptiste.
“There were two things we could have done,” Charles said. “Either we sent
them to prison or else eliminate them the same day. We held them in the
base. I don’t think after all that time we would have shot them.”
Cherichel had followed the men over the wall because he knew he was in a lot
of trouble. He said he got a ride in an unsuspecting Coast Guard policeman’s
pick-up truck and got off at the U.S. Embassy. When he ran in for help, the
staff told him they could not help, but that a certain human rights
organization might.
Charles said Cherichel was driven by ambitious personal goals, such as
getting a visa to leave Haiti, and used a perfectly normal mission to do
just that. “He did it for his own interests.”
As of Dec. 30, Pierre [“Canal de Vent”] had formed the “San Manman,” Creole
for “Without Mothers,” because Baptiste’s Sèkèy army was after him for
treachery.