19277: Esser: US is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org

February 26, 2004

Haiti's Lawyer:
US is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries

By AMY GOODMAN and JEREMY SCAHILL

The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that
the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt
against the country's democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as
General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the
paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by
Washington.

"I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and
employed by the intelligence services of the United States," Kurzban
told the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. "This is
clearly a military operation, and it's a military coup."

"There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my
point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming
about two weeks before this military operation started," Kurzban
said. " The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo."

If a direct US connection is proven, it will mark the second time in
just over a decade that Washington has been involved in a coup in
Haiti.

Several of the paramilitary leaders now rampaging Haiti are men who
were at the forefront of the US-backed campaign of terror during the
1991-94 coup against Aristide. Among the paramilitary figures now
leading the current insurrection is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former
number 2 man in the FRAPH paramilitary death squad.

Chamblain was convicted and sentenced in absentia to hard-labor for
life in trials for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy
region of Raboteau and the September 11, 1993 assassination of
democracy-activist Antoine Izmery. Chamblain recently arrived in
Gonaives with about 25 other commandos based in the Dominican
Republic, where Chamblain has been living since 1994. They were well
equipped with rifles, camouflage uniforms, and all-terrain vehicles.

Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's leadership was Haitian
Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to
death with his bodyguard and a driver on Oct. 14, 1993. According to
an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the
Center for Constitutional Rights "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain,
Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified
military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to
kill Malary." Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, was the founder of FRAPH.

An October 1994 article by journalist Allan Nairn in The Nation
magazine quoted Constant as saying that he was contacted by a US
Military officer named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense
attache at the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant says
Collins pressed him to set up a group to "balance the Aristide
movement" and do "intelligence" work against it. Constant admitted
that, at the time, he was working with CIA operatives in Haiti.
Constant is now residing freely in the US. He is reportedly living in
Queens, NY. At the time, James Woolsey was head of the CIA.

Another figure to recently reemerge is Guy Philippe, a former Haitian
police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities
discovered him plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs.
All of the men were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during
the 1991-1994 coup. Since that time, the Haitian government has
accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Police
Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as
hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau
over the following two years.

Kurzban also points to the presence of another FRAPH veteran, Jean
Tatun. Along with Chamblain, Tatun was convicted of gross violations
of human rights and murder in the Raboteau massacre.

"These people came through the Dominican border after the United
States had provided 20,000 M-16's to the Dominican army," says
Kurzban. "I believe that the United States clearly knew about it
before, and that given the fact of the history of these people,
[Washington is] probably very, very deeply involved, and I think
Congress needs to seriously look at what the involvement of the
Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has
been in this operation. Because it is a military operation. It's not
a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in
the last week or two."

Kurzban says he has hired military analysts to review photos of the
weapons being used by the paramilitary groups. He says that contrary
to reports in the media that the armed groups are using weapons
originally distributed by Aristide, the gangs are using highly
sophisticated and powerful weapons; weapons that far out-gun
Aristide's 3,000 member National Police force.

"I don't think that there's any question about the fact that the
weapons that they have did not come from Haiti," says Kurzban.
"They're organized as a military commando strike force that's going
from city to city."

Kurzban says that among the weapons being used by the paramilitaries
are: M-16's, M-60's, armor piercing weapons and rocket-propelled
grenade launchers. "They have weapons to shoot down the one
helicopter that the government has," he said. "They have acted as a
pretty tight-knit commando unit."

Chamblain and other paramilitary leaders have said they will march on
the capital, Port-au-Prince within two weeks. The US has put forth a
proposal, being referred to as a peace plan, that many viewed as
favorable to Aristide's opponents. Aristide accepted the plan, but
the opposition rejected it. Washington's point man on the crisis is
Roger Noriega, Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric
Affairs.

"I think Noriega has been an Aristide hater for over a decade," says
Kurzban, adding that he believes Noriega allowed the opposition to
delay their response to the plan to allow the paramilitaries to
capture more territory. "My reaction was they're just giving them
more time so they can take over more, that the military wing of the
opposition can take over more ground in Haiti and create a fate
accompli," Kurzban said. "Indeed, as soon as they said, 'we need an
extra day,' I predicted, unfortunately, and correctly, that they
would go into Cap Haitian (Haiti's 2nd largest city) and indeed the
next morning they did."

The leader of the "opposition" is an American citizen named Andy
Apaid. He was born in New York. Haitian law does not allow
dual-nationality and he has not renounced his US citizenship. In a
recent statement, Congressmember Maxine Waters blasted Apaid and his
opposition front, saying she believes "Apaid is attempting to
instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and then blame the government for the
resulting disaster in the belief that the United States will aid the
so-called protestors against President Aristide and his government."

"We have the leader of the opposition, who Mr. Noriega is negotiating
with, who Secretary Powell calls and who tells Secretary Powell, you
know, 'we need a couple more days' and Secretary Powell says 'that's
fine,'" says Kurzban. "I mean, there's some kind of theater of the
absurd going on with this opposition where it's led by an American
citizen, where they're just clearly stalling for time until they can
get more ground covered in Haiti through their military wing, and the
United States and Noriega, with a wink and nod, is kind of letting
them do that."

Kurzban says that because Aristide's opponents rejected Washington's
plan, "the next step clearly is to send in some kind of UN
peacekeeping force immediately."

"The question is," says Kurzban. "Will the international community
stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by
a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid
history of gross violations of human rights?"

Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated radio and TV program
broadcast on Pacifica Radio, NPR, community TV stations and Free
Speech TV Channel 9415 of the DishNetwork. Mike Burke and Sharif
Abdel Kouddous contributed to this report. They can be reached at:
mail@democracynow.org.
.