25967: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Paramilitary Leader (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 12 (AP) -- A Haitian rebel leader who once led a
paramilitary group accused of killing and torturing thousands of people has
been released from prison, his lawyer said Friday.
   Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a leader of the armed uprising that ousted
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, was released Thursday
from the National Penitentiary, attorney Stanley Gaston said.
   Chamblain was jailed in April 2004 on two counts of murder. He was
acquitted but kept in prison while authorities investigated allegations
that he masterminded a 1993 fire that devastated part of Cite Soleil, a
vast waterfront shantytown outside of Port-au-Prince, Gaston said.
   An appeals court ordered him released on July 26, ruling there were
insufficient grounds to hold him for the arson, Gaston said. The lawyer
said it took three weeks to push authorities into carrying out the order
for Chamblain's release.
   A former army sergeant, Chamblain was one of two leaders of the Front
for the Advancement and Progress of the Haitian People, a paramilitary
group suspected of killing and torturing thousands of people during the
1992-1994 military regime that seized power in the coup that first ousted
Aristide.
   A U.S. military intervention restored Aristide to power in 1994, and
Chamblain went to the Dominican Republic. He returned to Haiti in February
2004 to help lead the revolt that ousted Aristide a second time.
   Jean-Claude Bajeux, the director of the local Ecumenical Center for
Human Rights, condemned Chamblain's release.
   "Chamblain is a hired gun. Killers like him are always ready to serve
dictatorial regimes," Bajeux said. "What makes us indignant is not
Chamblain's release but the shortcomings of the judicial system and the
incompetence of its investigations."
   In 1995, Chamblain was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for
his alleged role in the 1993 slaying of businessman Antoine Izmery, an
Aristide financial backer. In April 2004, he turned himself in to face a
retrial in the case and was acquitted four months later.
   He remained in prison pending a retrial for his alleged role in a bloody
1994 raid on Raboteau, a shantytown and Aristide stronghold in the western
city of Gonaives. Chamblain had been sentenced in absentia to life
imprisonment for that charge in 2000.
   In May, Haiti's Supreme Court declared the original Raboteau trial a
mistrial, annulling the convictions of 38 former army and paramilitary
leaders.
   ------
   Associated Press writer Michael Norton in San Juan, Puerto Rico
contributed to this report.