14627: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Massacre (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHAEL NORTON

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 28 (AP) -- Two former Haitian army officers who
lived for years in the United States were returned to their homeland and
imprisoned for alleged involvement in a 1994 massacre, officials said
Tuesday.
   Former Col. Carl Dorelien, 53, and former Lt. Col. Herbert Valmond, 52,
arrived Monday in Haiti escorted by U.S. immigration officers. They were
being held at Port-au Prince's National Penitentiary, said Lovinsky
Pierre-Antoine, director of the National Migration Office.
   They were among 38 former soldiers and army henchmen who in 2000 were
convicted in absentia of murder in the 1994 killings of slumdwellers in
Raboteau, a shantytown in Gonaives about 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince.
   Sixteen others are now imprisoned for the slaughter, largely serving
life sentences.
   During the massacre, soldiers and thugs burst into dozens of homes,
beating and arresting people. People who tried to flee were shot. No one
knows how many were killed, because soldiers prevented victims' families
from retrieving bodies.
   Witnesses who reported the names of at least 15 people killed said dogs
ate some bodies and others were washed out to sea. International
pathologists testified they could identify only three victims.
   Dorelien and Valmond deny involvement in the Raboteau killings, and
under Haitian law may seek new trials.
   The slayings were part of attacks carried out to break support for
deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide following his ouster in a 1991
army coup. Dorelian was a coup leader.
   Soldiers and paramilitary thugs killed at least 3,000 people and maimed
thousands more before U.S. troops invaded in 1994 to end the bloodshed and
halt an exodus of boat people to Florida.
   Dorelien, who won $3.2 million in the Florida lottery in 1997, faces a
damage suit by the family of a victim in the Raboteau massacre, Michel
Pierre. His widow, Marie Jeanne Jean, filed the suit Friday in Miami
federal court.