21473: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Rebel leader plans to surrender for trial (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Thu, Apr. 22, 2004

HAITI


Rebel leader plans to surrender for trial

A rebel leader will turn himself in today, seeking a new trial on a 1995
murder convictiion.

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@herald.com


PORT-AU-PRINCE -- A top rebel leader and convicted killer who helped oust
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide plans to turn himself in to police
today for a 1995 murder conviction.

Louis Jodel Chamblain, a feared parliamentary leader and the second in
command of the rebel forces that helped topple Aristide, came to the
decision on his own, said Winter Etienne, another rebel leader and spokesman
for the National Resistance Front of Gonaives.

''He wants them to redo the trial,'' said Etienne, who along with other
rebel leaders will accompany Chamblain this morning when he heads to a
police station in Petionville, a suburb of the capital. ``We have someone
with us who is brave. He has decided to make the sacrifice to prove before
all that he did not violate the law.''

An alleged death squad leader under Haitian dictator Jean-Claude ''Baby
Doc'' Duvalier, Chamblain is a former leader of FRAPH or the Front for the
Advancement and Progress of Haiti. The paramilitary group tortured and
killed scores of Aristide supporters after a military coup toppled the
democratically elected leader in 1991, during his first presidential term.

In 1995, he was among 37 people convicted in absentia in a landmark trial
involving a massacre that occured in the Raboteau slum of Gonaives, the site
of the first rebellion on Feb. 5. He is accused of killing an Aristide
supporter and received a life sentence.

Also convicted during the trial was rebel leader Jean-Pierre Baptiste, also
known as Jean Tatoune. He too is scheduled to turn himself in along with
Chamblain, according to The Associated Press.

Until today, both have freely roamed the streets of the capital and other
cities, with pistols in their waistbands, despite international calls for
their arrest.

''This is progress,'' said Jean-Claude Bajeux, a human rights activist.
While he has issues with the way in which the Raboteau trial was conducted,
Bajeux said Chamblain needed to turn himself in.

Haiti's interim prime minister, Gerard Latortue, has come under heavy
criticism from both international human rights organizations, Caribbean
Community leaders and U.S. lawmakers following a controversial visit to
Gonaives last month during which he referred to Chamblain, Baptiste and
others as `freedom fighters.''

In other developments:

• The Bahamas withdrew its diplomats from Haiti, following the shooting and
robbery of its ambassador's wife, the AP reported.

• Police reported that the stampede at a police academy recruiting drive in
Port-au--Prince on Tuesday killed one person -- Jerry Prophete, 23 -- and
wounded 23 others.

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