24451: (news) Chamberlain: US politician urges Haiti to free former premier (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 7 (Reuters) - Former Haitian Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune, who started a hunger strike 16 days ago to protest
his imprisonment, should be released immediately, a U.S. politician said on
Monday.
     Neptune, who served under ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has
said he is a political prisoner. He was arrested in June and has been
detained without a trial.
     U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, met with Neptune at
the national penitentiary in Port-au-Prince and said his health is
deteriorating.
     "Yvon Neptune is very bad," Waters told reporters. "As I finished my
discussion with him, he was weakened to the point where he needed to lie
down."
     Neptune went into hiding after Aristide left Haiti on Feb. 29, 2004,
in the face of a monthlong armed revolt and under U.S. and French pressure
to quit.
     The National Coalition for Haitian Rights, a group perceived as
anti-Aristide, has accused Neptune of planning what it called a massacre on
Feb. 11, 2004, in La Syrie, a small village near Saint Marc, 60 miles (97
km) north of Port-au-Prince.
     The National Coalition for Haitian Rights said 50 people were killed.
But journalists who visited Saint Marc at the time only found five bodies
after Aristide supporters and police briefly retook the town from rebels.
     Waters said she had tried to convince Neptune to end the hunger
strike, "but he said he would not."
     "He is in a weakened position and I do not believe that he can
continue this fast without causing his death," Waters said. She also said
she believed Neptune was not guilty of any crime.
     Waters called Neptune a political prisoner and said Haiti's interim
government, which was installed following Aristide's departure last year,
was holding him "for no good reason."
     Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue has repeatedly rejected
allegations that the government has detained Aristide allies for political
reasons.
     Former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, detained since April 7, is
also on a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.