30558: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-UN-French Slaying (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, June 12 (AP) -- U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police on
Tuesday killed a suspected gang leader wanted in the kidnap-slaying of a
French businessman.
   Charles Junior Acdelhy was shot to death after he opened fire on
Brazilian peacekeepers and police as they tried to arrest him during an
early morning raid in Port-au-Prince's notorious Cite Soleil slum, U.N.
spokeswoman Sophie Boutaud de la Combe said. No peacekeepers or police were
injured.
   Acdelhy, known as Yoyo Piman, was accused of helping lead a Cite Soleil
gang blamed for a wave of kidnappings and killings that engulfed the
impoverished Caribbean nation after the bloody 2004 uprising of former
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   Acdelhy was wanted on international warrants for homicide, kidnapping
and criminal conspiracy, Boutaud said, including the January 2004 abduction
and killing of Claude-Bernard Lauture, a French businessman of Haitian
descent.
   Boutaud said peacekeepers had surrounded a section of Cite Soleil when
Acdelhy ran out and began shooting. She said peacekeepers warned Acdelhy to
put down his gun before they shot him "in legitimate self defense."
   The 8,800-strong, Brazil-led U.N. peacekeeping force once waged daily
gunbattles with armed gangs in Cite Soleil, Haiti's largest and poorest
slum, but has seen the number of confrontations fall sharply since a U.N.
gang offensive earlier this year that left several top gang leaders dead or
in jail.