5956: 19 arrested in connection with pre-election bombings (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: nozier@tradewind.net

Posted at 12:14 p.m. EST Saturday, November 25, 2000 
 Haiti: 19 arrested in connection with pre-election bombings

 PORT-AU-PRINCE -- (AFP) -- Authorities here have arrested 19 people
suspected of being involved in a rash of pre-election bombings that
killed two children and injured more than a dozen others, police said
Saturday. State-run television on Friday evening showed the detainees,
all about 25 years old, as well as their hand guns and home-made
explosives seized at the time of their arrest. Nine explosions in the
past week, apparently caused by small home-made bombs, left a
14-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl dead and 16 wounded.
 Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis blamed ``certain sectors of the
 opposition'' for the bombings, an accusation the opposition has denied.
 Haitians are expected to return former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide
to power Sunday in elections clouded by a climate of fear.
 The presidential and senatorial elections have been boycotted by 15
opposition groups which have come together as the Democratic Convergence
alliance. The opposition alliance declined to present a candidate in the
presidential race, claiming the vote will be open to the same kind of
abuses they say distorted the May and July legislative elections in
favor of Aristide's Lavalas Family party.