18630: (Chamberlain) Infamous militia leader joins Haitian revolt-report (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Carlos Valdez

     GONAIVES, Feb 14 (Reuters) - A Haitian paramilitary leader convicted
of an infamous massacre has joined an armed revolt against President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to radio reports on Saturday.
     Haitian radio said Louis Jodel Chamblain, leader of the right-wing
FRAPH militia that terrorized Haitians when a military junta ruled the
Caribbean country between 1991 and 1994, came out of hiding in neighboring
Dominican Republic.
     He told local radio he had hooked up with an armed gang that for more
than a week has controlled Gonaives -- the same city where Chamblain's
gunmen went on a rampage in the seaside slum of Raboteau in April 1994,
killing 25 people.
     Chamblain said he planned to help the Gonaives rebels, who once
belonged to a pro-Aristide gang known as the Cannibal Army, march on the
capital Port-au-Prince.
     The arrival of the battle-hardened militia leader, which could not be
independently confirmed, could give the rebels a military boost at a time
when the nine-day-old rebellion has reached an uneasy stalemate after
Haiti's police and armed Aristide loyalists fought back.
     The authorities have retaken several towns from opponents of Aristide,
a former Roman Catholic priest who became Haiti's first democratic leader
in 1991 but who, midway through his second term, faces accusations of
corruption and political violence.
     Aristide was ousted in a bloody military coup months into his first
term. He was restored to power in a U.S. invasion in 1994, and re-elected
in 2000.
     Chamblain's return to a country scarred by 34 coups in its 200 years
of independence from France is also likely to strengthen government
accusations that the rebels are criminals and ex-soldiers affiliated with
bloody former dictatorships.
     In Gonaives, conditions in the decrepit, rebel-held city of 200,000
continued to worsen and unclaimed bodies piled up in a morgue.
     Around 30 bodies in the early stages of decomposition lay in the La
Providence hospital morgue because relatives were too scared to pick them
up and bury them. Up to half had died from gunshot wounds, according to
hospital workers.
     "The police came to hide in the hospital. They fired on the people ...
and four died here," said a security guard who gave his name as Louders.
     On one side of the morgue, the crumpled forms of half a dozen babies
and young children lay stacked on two shelves. Many appeared severely
malnourished.
     The hospital was empty of patients as up to 300 fled when the fighting
began.
     In the town of Saint Marc, 65 miles (105 km) north of Port-au-Prince,
police said they detained the car of a senator of Aristide's ruling Lavalas
Family Party, and found that it was being used by a former Lavalas senator
turned Aristide critic to carry weapons.
     The government, meanwhile, opened a new front against political
opponents who have been holding demonstrations for months, but who distance
themselves from the armed uprising.
     Government attorney Ira Kurzban called on Washington to investigate if
businessman and leading opposition figure Andre Apaid had renounced his
U.S. citizenship.
     He said that if Apaid had not, he was in breach of the U.S. Neutrality
Act that prohibits Americans from calling for the violent overthrow of
elected governments.
     "I want people in Haiti and the U.S. to know the truth about people
who call themselves responsible leaders and at the same time break the
law," Kurzban said.

     (Additional reporting by Amy Bracken)