24142: Lemieux: (AP) Haiti rebel leader says he won't disarm (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Haiti rebel leader says he won't disarm



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- A rebel leader who
helped oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has
returned to Haiti after more than a month in a
Florida detention center and says he and fellow
rebels will not disarm.

Butteur Metayer, a 34-year-old legal U.S.
resident alien, was detained by Customs and
Border Protection agents on November 28 after he
arrived at Miami International Airport from
Haiti. He was deported on Saturday.

Immigration officials have not released details
on the case, but Metayer told family members he
was held because he overstayed his visit to
Haiti. He told his cousin, Jacques Magene, that
agents said Metayer had been out of the United
States for about six months and 14 days -- two
weeks longer than allowed by law.

Metayer led a gang known as the Cannibal Army,
which turned on Aristide after gang leader Amiot
Metayer, Butteur's brother, was assassinated in
2003. Butteur Metayer had accused the government
of silencing his brother to prevent him from
giving damaging information about Aristide, who
has denied any involvement with the gang.

Aristide left the country for exile in Africa on
February 29.

In a radio interview aired Monday, Metayer said
he and fellow former rebels, now called the Front
for National Resistance, will continue patrolling
northwestern Gonaives to counter a rise in gang
violence since Aristide's ouster.

"Now I'm back and we'll provide security for
Gonaives to get rid of the thieves," he told
local broadcaster Radio Provincale. "We're not
going to take up arms (to fight), but we're not
going to set them aside either."

Some 500 Argentine soldiers are in Gonaives as
part of a 7,400-member U.N. peacekeeping mission
in Haiti to help stabilize the country in the
wake of the uprising and devastating floods in
September.

Haiti's U.S.-backed interim government has called
on all armed factions to disarm, saying only
Haitian police and U.N. peacekeepers will be
recognized as legitimate law enforcers.

Still, armed rebels, many of them ex-soldiers
from Haiti's demobilized military, patrol parts
of the country, unchecked by police or
peacekeepers.

Metayer is one of several ex-Cannibal Army
leaders to have problems with the law in recent
months.

Wilfort Ferdinand, or "Ti Wil," whom fellow
rebels appointed Gonaives' police chief during
the uprising, has been in hiding since officials
issued a warrant for his arrest in connection
with the shooting death of a 6-year-old girl.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.




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