24314: (news) Chamberlain: Gunmen take Haiti ex-prime minister from prison (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Gunmen stormed Haiti's main
prison on Saturday and drove away with jailed former Prime Minister Yvon
Neptune and other inmates linked to ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, witnesses said.
     Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert appeared to
have been taken out at gunpoint by the attackers, who sent poorly armed
prison guards fleeing the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, they
said.
     A police source speaking on condition of anonymity said up to 500 of
the prison's 1,200 inmates may have escaped during the attack. One off-duty
prison guard was killed.
     "I saw three gunmen escorting Neptune and several other prisoners and
force them to get into the back of a double-cab white pickup," said Jacques
Dameus, who said he was in front of the prison at the time.
     "When they arrived at the gate of the National Penitentiary, Neptune
did not want to walk any further. One gunman raised his weapon and forced
him to walk and get into the pickup," Dameus told Reuters.
     Neither the police nor the interim government, which jailed Neptune
and Privert on charges of violence, made any statement on the prison break.
     But deputy public prosecutor Carvest Jean said afterward that neither
Neptune nor Privert, who their supporters say are victims of political
persecution against allies of Aristide, remained in the prison.
     Residents of the area said the heavily armed gunmen arrived in three
vehicles. They entered the prison shooting and guards fled.
     Bullet casings littered the ground outside the prison later and bullet
holes pockmarked the walls of nearby houses.
     International police who are part of a 7,000-strong Brazilian-led U.N.
force trying to keep the peace in the chaotic and impoverished Caribbean
country arrived later and began interviewing witnesses.
     Several witnesses mentioned the white pickup truck and said its
license plate had been folded over to obscure its number.
     A woman said some of the attackers wore T-shirts with "Haitian
National Police" written on them while the rest were in casual clothes.
     The guard who was killed, Omeus Guerrier, 25, was outside the jail at
the time of the attack.
     In addition to Neptune and Privert, who had been jailed for several
months without being indicted, witnesses said the gunmen took away a former
soldier named Anel Belzaire, who had been arrested after weapons were found
in his car.
     Almost a year after Aristide fled an armed revolt -- his stature as
the father of Haitian democracy and champion of the country's poor sullied
by charges of despotism and corruption -- Haiti remains torn by political
violence.
     The government is pitted against street gangs still loyal to Aristide,
and its once warm relations with former soldiers who helped lead the revolt
against Aristide have chilled under their repeated demands for the
re-establishment of the army.