28153: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Skulls Found (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 25 (AP) -- Seventeen human skulls were found
Saturday in a trash-strewn wooded lot outside Haiti's capital -- including
at least some discovered inside a container that had been tossed from a
passing car, police and witnesses said.
   An Associated Press reporter watched as four United Nations civilian
police officers measured and numbered the skulls, including some found in
small gray plastic buckets. Police then stacked the skulls into a cardboard
box and removed them from the suburban lot, which is adjacent to several
restaurants frequented by wealthy Haitians and U.N. officials.
   "All we know is that 17 skulls have been discovered," said U.N.
spokesman David Wimhurst. He said Haitian authorities supported by U.N.
police were investigating.
   Most of the skulls had a yellow-brown tint, as though they had been
buried at some point. Only one seen by an AP reporter appeared bleached,
and the buckets appeared new.
   "It could be a homicide," said Frantz Lerebours, a spokesman for Haiti's
National Police. "The forensic scientists will have to analyze to skulls to
find out what happened to those people because it's very curious that we
found them all in the same place."
   Emmanuel Crepsac, 44, who lives nearby, said bystanders told him they
saw a container tossed from a moving car earlier Saturday. He said at least
some of the skulls were inside the container, which rolled down an
embankment into the trash-strewn wooded area.
   "They said someone in the car just threw something down there and then
sped off. When people went to see what it was, they saw some skulls,"
Crepsac said. Police arrived after hearing reports of the discovery.
   Some 7,300 U.N. troops and 1,750 international police are in the country
under Brazilian command, helping maintain order.
   A wave of kidnappings and violence has plagued the Western Hemisphere's
poorest nation, where criminal gangs have flourished in the aftermath of
the rebellion that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February
2004.
   President-elect Rene Preval has pledged to restore order.