18742: (Chamberlain) Old foes join forces against Haiti president (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Jane Sutton

    MIAMI, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Several old foes of Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
including a leader of a feared right-wing militia, have joined a rebellion
against the Haitian president and escalated the insurgency by taking
another city.
     Supporters of the brutal military dictatorship that ousted Aristide in
a coup just months after he took office in 1991, two of them slipped back
into Haiti from exile in neighboring Dominican Republic at the weekend.
     Louis Jodel Chamblain, who paraded through the central city of Hinche
on Tuesday, a day after his gunmen kicked out police, was the co-founder of
a militia that killed thousands of Haitians during the regime that ran
Haiti from 1991 to 1994.
     Chamblain was an Army officer accused of heading death squads during
the last years of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's dictatorship in the
late 1980s. He was suspected of taking part in a 1987 massacre, in which at
least 34 voters were shot dead and civilian-run elections were aborted.
     In 1993, he joined with Emannuel "Toto" Constant to form the Front for
the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People, a paramilitary group
whose acronym, FRAPH, sounds like the Haitian Creole word for 'hit.' The
group launched violent protests and strikes, brutally attacking Aristide
supporters and torching whole neighborhoods.
     FRAPH mobs turned back the USS Harlan County when the warship tried to
ferry U.S. and Canadian troops to Haiti in 1993 to clear the way for
Aristide's return to power.
     In 1994, after Aristide was back in office, Chamblain was summoned to
appear before a Haitian judge investigating human rights abuses and he fled
to the Dominican Republic.
     In 1995, a Haitian court convicted Chamblain in absentia of the 1993
murder of Antoine Izmery, a prominent businessman and Aristide supporter
who was dragged from a church, forced to kneel and shot in the head.
     Chamblain was also convicted in absentia of murder in 2000, in
connection with 1994 Raboteau massacre, when FRAPH forces went on a rampage
in a slum in the western city of Gonaives and killed more than two dozen
people.
     Guy Philippe, who also turned up in rebel-held Gonaives at the
weekend, is a former soldier assigned to the police force that replaced the
Haitian army, and was police chief in the northern city of Cap-Haitien.
Suspecting he was plotting a coup with other police officials, the Haitian
government fired him in 2000 and Philippe fled to the Dominican Republic.
     On Dec. 17, 2001, 30 armed men stormed Haiti's National Palace in what
the government said was a coup attempt against Aristide. More than a dozen
people were killed in the battle and reprisals that followed. A captured
fighter said the attack was orchestrated by Philippe.
     Philippe was detained shortly afterward in Ecuador and deported to the
Dominican Republic. Dominican authorities arrested him in May 2003 but
later released him, saying they found no evidence he was plotting against
Haiti's government and declined its request to deport him.
     The government has also said that Jean "Jean Tatoune" Pierre Baptiste
is among the leaders of the revolt in Hinche.
     Tatoune was one of the leaders of the popular uprising that forced
Jean-Claude Duvalier to flee Haiti in 1986. Under the military junta of the
early 1990s, he joined the FRAPH and was serving life in prison in Gonaives
for his role in the Raboteau massacre.
     He escaped in August 2002 when members of a rival gang known as the
Cannibal Army crashed a bulldozer into the penitentiary to free their
imprisoned leader, Amiot Metayer. Tatoune joined forces with Metayer, who
was murdered last September. Metayer's brother, Buter, blamed the
government and turned his men against Aristide.