15176: Hermantin: Haiti reports clashes with armed men in the mountains (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, Mar. 17, 2003

Haiti reports clashes with armed men in the mountains
BY JANE REGAN
Special to The Herald

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- A band of armed men hiding out in the mountains continues
to clash with Haitian police near the Dominican Republic border, but beyond
reports of attacks on police stations little is known about their
identities, allegiances or numbers.

The Haitian government alleges the band is ''the armed branch'' of its
political opposition, the Democratic Convergence, whose members reject the
allegation and who say the government is behind the armed group.

''They are former soldiers and they are part of the opposition. They want to
overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,'' Haitian National Police
Inspector Jean Dady Simeon said.

''We consider this whole thing a fake,'' said Gerard Pierre-Charles,
coordinator of the Organization of People in Struggle and a Convergence
member. ``The Lavalas government is doing this to justify its permanent and
institutionalized violence against the Haitian people. We do not believe in
violence.''

In recent months, the Haitian National Police has come under criticism from
local and international human rights groups for irregular and even illegal
activities, with the U.S. government blocking the visas of several
high-ranking officers for their alleged involvement in the drug trade.

Witnesses confirm the existence of armed men who said they were former
soldiers.

CAR STOPPED

In December, men wearing uniforms and carrying guns stopped a car with
doctors and Washington-based filmmaker David Murdock.

''If our driver had kept going through it, who knows if they would have
opened fire,'' he said last week. He said he felt afraid for Haitians who
have to travel that road regularly.

HELD AT GUNPOINT

Murdock said the men held him and others at gunpoint, lecturing them on how
they would overthrow Aristide. Murdock wrote a letter to the U.S. Embassy in
Port-au-Prince about the incident.

Still, details of the armed band and its origin are unclear because of
difficulties confirming police versions of events. Journalists from the
capital and the region have been afraid to investigate because of possible
reprisals, and others have been fearful of speaking on the record.

Police have linked the band to numerous attacks in the region as well as to
an assault on the National Palace in 2001.

According to Simeon, the armed group is made up of about 50 former soldiers
from the Haitian army -- demobilized by Aristide in 1995 -- and is ``the
armed branch of the Democratic Convergence.''

The band has killed a judge, a police officer and five civilians, many of
them members of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, according to Simeon.

Officer Patrick Samdy, a member of the Haitian police's SWAT team, was
ambushed and killed in mid-February when he was delivering ammunition to
police in Belladere, Simeon said. A week later, the same group reportedly
shot at a police helicopter.

IN PRISON

A special police unit followed up with a raid in which two assailants were
killed and two assault rifles and some homemade bombs were recovered,
according to Simeon. Police also recovered four vehicles, including Samdy's,
he said. He added that six of the assailants are in prison, but he did not
supply their names.

Journalists have not seen the men allegedly arrested, the weapons recovered
or the bodies of the victims.

Last Monday, the band reportedly struck again in the nearby town of
Baptiste. They temporarily took over the police station, cut telephone
lines, disarmed the officers and then fled to their mountain hideaway.

Simeon said when police chase the ''army,'' its members often flee across
the border to the Dominican Republic. However, Dominican authorities said
they were unaware of any official complaints filed by the Haitian
government. The Dominican ambassador to Haiti was not in the country.

Simeon said the men from the mountains were involved in the Dec. 17, 2001,
assault on Haiti's National Palace, which was followed by attacks on
opposition headquarters and homes by pro-government mobs across the country.

While the government called the attack an ''attempted coup d'état,'' an
Organization of American States report last summer said the palace assault
was not a coup attempt and that there was police complicity.

Herald staff writer Marika Lynch contributed to this report.







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