19658: Esser: Convicted Assassin Gets Role in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Convicted Assassin Gets Role in Haiti

By PAISLEY DODDS
Associated Press Writer

March 2, 2004, 11:13 PM EST

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Rebel leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a
convicted killer and accused death squad leader, says he has no plans
of fading into the shadows.

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti Sunday -- a departure
that created a power vacuum and raised concern that gunmen who
terrorized this Caribbean nation in decades past would return to
influence.

"I'm commanding operations," Chamblain told The Associated Press
Tuesday inside the old headquarters of Haiti's disbanded army, where
rebels are setting up their headquarters.

Chief rebel leader Guy Philippe announced he was "military chief,"
ordering Aristide's police commanders to meet with him or he'd arrest
them.

Philippe has not been linked to death squads, but rights groups
charge he has a poor human rights record as a police official in the
capital.

As corpses show on the streets and reports surface of revenge attacks
against members of Aristide's government, human rights groups are
pressing interim leaders to rethink their position with rebel leaders
like Chamblain.

"These are the death squad people. These are the killers. These are
the people I tried to prosecute in the 1990s," said human rights
lawyer Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New
York City.

Four bodies were spotted Monday on a dirt road, three shot in the
head execution-style, hands tied behind their backs. Two more bodies
were on the street Tuesday, and six with gunshot wounds were brought
to the morgue during the day.

"We see it as a very disturbing portent for Haiti's future," said
Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch. "There's a potential for a
cycle of violence." She noted her organization has already received
reports of reprisals against Aristide government officials, including
the sacking of homes belonging to former Haitian Police Chief Jocelyn
Pierre and government spokesman Mario Dupuy.

Among other rebels, the rights groups are also concerned about
Butteur Metayer, a street gang leader who freely admits that he used
to go around terrorizing Aristide's opponents, and Remissainthe
Ravix, one-time leader of armed youth groups that organized bloody
protests against Haiti's government in the 1980s.

Chamblain says he's never killed anyone and is against executions.

But he allegedly ran death squads in the last years of Jean-Claude
"Baby Doc" Duvalier's dictatorship in the late 1980s and is more
notorious for his role in the paramilitary Front for the Advancement
of Progress of the Haitian People, or FRAPH. The acronym in French
means "to thrash."

Terrorizing supporters of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, the group
was blamed for thousands of killings before a U.S. intervention ended
three years of military rule in 1994.

"I never committed murder. I am not a terrorist. I am not a drug
dealer. I am not a criminal," Chamblain told the AP.

He was, however, convicted in absentia and sentenced to life
imprisonment for the 1993 murder of Aristide financier Antoine
Izmery, who was dragged from Mass in a church, made to kneel outside
and shot.

A CIA intelligence memorandum implicated him in the 1993
assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary.

A sergeant in the Haitian army, Chamblain left the army in the late
1980s and reappeared in 1993 as FRAPH's co-founder.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
.