28174: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Skulls Found (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 27 (AP) -- Scavengers found 10 human skulls Monday
in a trash heap -- the second such grisly find in as many days in Haiti's
capital, where authorities speculated that the bones may have come from a
Voodoo ritual.
   The skulls were inside plastic buckets along a busy road in an eastern
district of Port-au-Prince, bystanders said. Two U.N. civilian police could
be seen trying to match the skulls with several sets of jaw bones also
found in the dump, littered with tin cans, old shoes and a child's doll.
   Authorities may have to call in experts from outside the country to
determine the age of the skulls, which were to be turned over to Haiti's
national police, U.N. civilian police spokesman Marc Jacquet said.
   On Saturday, police found 17 skulls in a nearby wooded area in the
Petionville suburb of the capital. Witnesses said those skulls were inside
plastic buckets that were tossed from a passing car.
   Haitian police spokesman Frantz Lerebours said a preliminary review of
the 17 skulls ruled out bullets as the cause of death.
   He said police were investigating whether the skulls were somehow
related to Voodoo, a faith that mixes Christianity with West African
religions. Human skulls are symbolically important in Voodoo and are
believed by some to evoke or ward off evil spirits.
   "It's possible they're related to Voodoo, but we can't say definitively
right now," Lerebours said.
   Last month, a Haitian woman was arrested at an airport in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla., for smuggling a human skull in her luggage. The woman, a
legal U.S. resident, said she brought the skull from Haiti to use in her
Voodoo beliefs.