24345: (news) Chamberlain: Haitian police hunt rebel ex-soldiers' financier (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Haitian police are hunting
for a financier of last year's revolt against former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was freed in a weekend attack on the country's
main prison, authorities said on Thursday.
     Jean-Claude Louis-Jean is known as a financier of ex-soldiers and
other rebels, including Guy Philippe and the self-proclaimed leader of the
former military, Remissainthe Ravix, who led a revolt that ousted Aristide
a year ago.
     Aristide was replaced by an interim government pending elections
scheduled to be held in November in the troubled and impoverished Caribbean
country.
     Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said on Tuesday that the attack
on the national penitentiary and the breakout of some 500 prisoners that
followed were the result of plot that involved a number of police officers
guarding the prison.
     Police sources said they believed the Saturday attack on the prison
could have been aimed at freeing Louis-Jean, whom many former members of
the military who have joined the police still consider their boss and
benefactor.
     Louis-Jean had been arrested last September in Petionville, a suburb
of the capital, on charges that he was destabilizing the government. He was
also suspected of drug trafficking.
     Shortly after Louis-Jean's arrest, Philippe threatened to attack the
police station in Petionville, prompting Haitian police and U.N. troops who
are in the country on a peacekeeping mission to mount a big security
operation around the police station.
     After the show of force by U.N. forces, Philippe backed down, but
continued to condemn Louis-Jean's arrest.
     Louis-Jean, along with another former member of the military, Anel
Belizaire, are the only high-profile escapees from the weekend breakout who
have not surrendered. More than 50 escapees have turned themselves in to
police, according to government officials.
     A police source and a Haitian journalist in the area said the pair
were now in the same region as Ravix and a group of heavily armed
ex-soldiers who have taken refuge in Terre-Rouge near the Haitian-Dominican
border.
     Ravix is wanted by police who accused him of being responsible for the
killing earlier this month of four police officers.
     Former soldiers who helped lead last year's revolt were initially on
good terms with the new authorities after Aristide, a one-time champion of
democracy whose image was tarnished by charges of rough tactics and
corruption, was bundled into exile.
     But relations have soured, partly over repeated demands by former
soldiers for the re-establishment of the army, which was disbanded a decade
ago.