20125: (Chamberlain) Aristide lawyer calls on US to probe "kidnapping" (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Jane Sutton

     MIAMI, March 9 (Reuters) - An attorney for exiled Haitian leader
Jean-Bertrand Aristide asked the U.S. attorney general on Tuesday to
investigate what he called the kidnapping of the president and a coup in
Haiti, as a first step to returning Aristide to power in Port-au-Prince.
     Lawyer Ira Kurzban told a news conference he had written to U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft seeking a congressional investigation and
the prosecution of U.S. officials he accused of engineering a coup d'etat
in Haiti.
     Aristide left his revolt-torn Caribbean country on Feb. 29, urged to
quit by the United States and France as rebels closed in on the Haitian
capital. In exile in the Central African Republic, Aristide has accused the
United States of kidnapping him and forcing him into exile, which
Washington has denied.
     Kurzban said the United States refused to allow the U.S. security
company guarding Aristide to send reinforcements to Haiti in the days
before the Haitian leader left, and told Aristide that U.S. forces could
not protect him unless he signed a resignation letter.
     "They in effect through threats and coercion, forced him to sign a
letter of resignation," Kurzban said.
     He said that in the early hours of Feb. 29, Aristide thought he was
being driven from his home in Port-au-Prince to the National Palace but was
taken instead to the airport where he boarded a U.S.-chartered plane.
     Once he was held on board "it was a kidnapping," the lawyer asserted.
     Kurzban said the U.S. actions violated international treaties covering
the treatment of protected persons, who include Aristide and his U.S.-born
wife Mildred.
     In his first public appearance in the Central African Republic,
Aristide said on Monday he still regarded himself as Haiti's legitimate
leader and insisted he had been abducted by U.S. forces.
     Washington has denied Aristide's allegations of kidnapping, saying it
helped him leave Haiti but the decision to go was his own. His supporters
have alleged that a resignation letter he signed is invalid as he wrote it
under duress.
     In France on Monday, a lawyer for Aristide said Aristide planned to
sue the United States and France for allegedly kidnapping him.
     Kurzban said that lawyers would consider a lawsuit later once they had
collected evidence.
     Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a champion of Haiti's
emerging democracy when he helped overthrow the brutal Duvalier family
dictatorship in 1986. But critics accused him of ruling autocratically and
tolerating corruption. Simmering tensions erupted into an armed revolt in
early February.