19599: Lemieux: CNN/AP: Looters pick through Aristide's villa (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Looters pick through Aristide's villa
Letters about the CIA, FBI left behind


TABARRE, Haiti (AP) --A teenage looter banged away on a
grand piano dragged into the courtyard. Presidential
documents, baby rattles still in their wrappers and broken
plates lay scattered around. Nabokov's "Lolita" sat on a
shelf in the library.

As Jean-Bertrand Aristide arrived in Africa seeking refuge
Monday, it looked as if a tornado had blown through his
private villa back home. Haitians upended furniture,
smashed glass, picked over his books and tossed
presidential correspondence from file cabinets.

"It's our own system," said one man, Junior Jean, 23. "As
soon as a leader falls we loot his palace."

Indeed, the villa, an estate Aristide says was donated by a
supporter, also was looted after his ouster in a 1991 coup.

People started ransacking the concrete white mansion Sunday
after the president resigned under international and
domestic pressure and flew out of the country. (Full story)

On Monday, English-speaking security guards with machine
guns flew away from the house in a helicopter that had been
sitting on the lawn. After they left, dozens more looters
moved in.

"I was walking by and I saw the gate open," said Fresnel
Lucien, 18.

"I was hoping to get this fantasy book called 'The Red
Dragon' because I heard Aristide had it. But all I got was
these books," he said, pointing to a book written by
Aristide and translated into Portuguese.

The three-story house was littered with broken glass and
overturned furniture.

While dozens of people carried off loot, a teenager in
T-shirt and ragged pants tried out the keyboard of a grand
piano that looters had lugged out of the house but then
abandoned by the pool. An armoire stood nearby.

Boxes of Christmas decorations and children's toys still in
their packaging littered the ground. School pictures of
Aristide's nephews addressed to "Uncle Titid," as Aristide
was known, fluttered about.

In the living room, faux leather couches were overturned
and plant pots were shattered. Most of the food in the
kitchen cupboards was gone. Upstairs in the bedrooms of
Aristide's two daughters, futons, clothes, books and
pictures of the girls were strewn about.

An oval library on the third floor appeared to have been
used by Aristide as an office. Certificates of recognition,
including one from the Hollywood Rotary Club, circled the
walls.

Documents found in office
As military helicopters roared overhead, looters fought
over books filling the room's shelves. Along with political
science books were a couple of soft pornography paperbacks,
fitness books, "What Uncle Sam Really Wants," "1,001 Great
Jokes" and "Lolita."

People pulled documents from file cabinets that included
notes about meetings with U.S. ambassadors and copies of
Aristide's communications with the U.S. government.

In one letter, dated January 30, 1996, Aristide asks
then-U.S. Ambassador William Lacy Swing for the return of
documents on the paramilitary group FRAPH, which killed
hundreds of Aristide supporters during a 1991-94 military
dictatorship that had ousted the elected Aristide.

Nineteen boxes of papers on FRAPH, which many Haitians
allege had CIA links, were taken away by U.S. officials
after the 1994 U.S. military intervention that restored
Aristide to office. Washington returned the documents in
2001, with some parts deleted, including people's names.

An Aristide letter from July 13, 1995, set out conditions
for FBI agents to conduct investigations in Haiti,
including a requirement that anyone U.S. agents wanted to
question had the right to have a lawyer present.

Aristide apparently asked at some point for the FBI to
handle the investigations of all violent crimes in Haiti.
In a July 27, 1995, letter, Swing wrote to the Haitian
leader, "The FBI cannot 'extend' its efforts ... to all
victims of violent crime in Haiti."

Also found on the floor were handwritten notes from
American school children telling Aristide they were doing a
school project on Haiti and were assigned to write him.

A family photo album was thrown into the corner. In it were
pictures of Aristide with Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Jesse
Jackson. There were also pictures of Aristide at his
birthday party and on vacation with his wife, Mildred.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.

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