15207: (Chamberlain) Rights advocates criticize jailing of women's rights activist (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

By MICHAEL NORTON

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 13 - Human rights advocates on Thursday criticized
the jailing of a women's rights activist and her husband on accusations of
possessing illegal weapons, saying they should be freed because they have
not been charged with any crime.
        Carline Simon and her husband Serge have been in jail since Sunday,
when police detained them as they held a meeting on women's rights.
        Police said they found an unspecified number of automatic weapons
in the couple's car. No formal charges have been filed, though Haitian law
requires suspects be charged within 48 hours or released.
        Government prosecutor Josue Pierre-Louis ordered Monday that the
couple be released, but police said the order did not hold since the couple
was caught "red-handed."
        A judge in suburban Delmas, where the couple is being held,
referred the case Thursday to a civil court in the capital, Port-au-Prince,
the couple's lawyer Osner Fevry said. The Port-au-Prince court clerk,
however, refused to receive the case because the government prosecutor had
already ordered a release, Fevry said.
        "The Simons are no longer in legal detention. The police are
holding them hostage," said Fevry, who said he would appeal to the
international community to pressure President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to
have them released.
        The U.S. Embassy on Wednesday denounced the detention as
"arbitrary," and on Thursday France also called for the couple's immediate
release.
        "It demonstrates the extent to which the police have been
politicized," said Marie-Yolene Gilles, spokeswoman for the National
Coalition of Haitian Rights.
        Human rights lawyer Renan Hedouville said the couple's detention
suggests Haiti "is being governed by a totalitarian, iron-fisted regime."
        Police have said there is no connection between the couple's
detention and the fact that, two days before her arrest, Carline Simon led
about 100 women on an anti-government march to protest economic conditions
and urge Aristide to resign.
        Since November, dozens of anti-government demonstrations have
called for Aristide's resignation. At least four people have died and more
than 350 have been injured in clashes with police and Aristide supporters.
The president has said he will serve out his term, which ends in 2006.