15206: (Chamberlain) Police release jailed women's rights activist in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

By MICHAEL NORTON

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 14 - Police freed a prominent women's rights activist
and her husband after jailing them for five days without charge.
        Carline Simon and her husband Serge were released late Thursday,
their lawyer Osner Fevry said Friday.
        Simon, who has previously spoken out against the government of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, spoke out against her detention in a
radio interview hours later.
        "The experience reinforced us in our determination to continue the
struggle for the liberation of the people, held hostage by a dictatorship,"
she told the Haitian station Radio Kiskeya.
        The Simons were jailed Sunday after armed men disrupted a meeting
they were holding on women's rights in a seaside slum. Supporters of
Aristide said on national television they had threatened the couple because
the two were handing out money and weapons to incite an uprising.
        Police who arrived in the slum said they found an unspecified
number of automatic weapons in the couple's car and detained the two for
possessing prohibited weapons.
        No formal charges were filed, though Haitian law requires suspects
be charged within 48 hours or released.
        Residents who witnessed the detention said there were no guns at
the meeting or in the couple's car.
        Government prosecutor Josue Pierre-Louis ordered the couple
released Monday, but police didn't immediately execute the order.
        Their detention provoked criticism by human rights activists in
Haiti and some foreign governments.
        The U.S. Embassy on Wednesday denounced the detention as
"arbitrary," and on Thursday France called for the couple's immediate
release.
        Police said there was 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 involving demonstrators and police.
The president has said he will serve out his term, which ends in 2006.