Haiti Rebels Occupy Police Headquarters
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By PAISLEY DODDS and IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writers
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Rebels occupied the national police
headquarters but kept away from the U.S.-guarded presidential palace
after their convoy entered the capital Monday to the cheers of thousands
celebrating the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Dozens of insurgents packing an eclectic
array of weapons dating to World War II
swaggered around a posh hotel where rebel
leader Guy Philippe met with members of the
political coalition that opposed Aristide. He
was joined by rebel commander Louis-Jodel
Chamblain, who is a former army death squad
leader and a convicted assassin.
With U.S. military forces on the ground and
more on the way, Aristide claimed they forced
him to leave Haiti and told him they would
"start shooting and killing" if he refused,
according to a telephone interview with the
exiled president after he was flown aboard a
contracted U.S.-government plane to the
impoverished Central African Republic.
Aristide was put in contact with The
Associated Press by the Rev. Jesse Jackson
(news - web sites) on Monday following a
news conference in Atlanta, where the civil
rights leader called on Congress to investigate
Aristide's ouster.
U.S. officials called the allegation - repeated
earlier by other U.S. critics who said they were called by Aristide -
"nonsense" and "absurd."
Philippe said he planned to make preparations for the new president,
former Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre, to assume
office, as called for in the constitution.
"We're just going to make sure the palace is clean for the president to
come ... that there is no threat there," he said as his convoy of 70 rebels
approached the capital.
They were greeted by thousands of Haitians, many shouting "Liberty!"
and "Aristide is gone!" as the convoy later rolled into the plaza near the
National Palace.
But a half dozen U.S. Marines guarded the palace and the rebels did not
approach. Philippe has said that he has no political aspirations but
wants reinstituted the Haitian army that ousted Aristide in 1991 and that
Aristide disbanded in 1995.
In the capital, there were reports of reprisal killings of militant Aristide
supporters accused of terrorizing people. An AP reporter saw four bodies
at Carrefour, on the outskirts of the capital, three of them with hands tied
behind their backs and shot in the head execution-style.
The fourth body was that of a man allegedly shot by police, said witness
Charlie LaPlanche. "He ran out of the (police) pickup truck and then it
became a manhunt. He went into a house. They found him. And then
they took him out and executed him," he said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said U.S. forces "will
have a lead role" initially in restoring order to Haiti following the
three-week rebellion that swept Aristide from power. The U.N. Security
Council late Sunday approved the deployment of a multinational force to
Haiti.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld estimated that between 1,500
and 2,000 U.S. troops would go to Haiti for a "relatively short period."
They would participate in an interim force, which could include as many
as 5,000 troops from several countries, that would stay until replaced by
a U.N. peacekeeping force.
There were no clashes between the rebel force and the U.S. and French
troops, who were establishing security at diplomatic missions and other
sites. Philippe earlier said he welcomed the peacekeepers.
Powell said he did not want certain rebel leaders to take any role in a
new government. Philippe was an officer in the army when it repressed
dissident politicians.
"Some of these individuals we would not want to see re-enter civil
society in Haiti because of their past records, and this is something we
will have to work through," Powell said.
Amnesty International called for international peacekeepers to arrest
Chamblain and Jean Pierre Baptiste, also a rebel, who escaped from jail
after being convicted in the 1994 massacre of 15 Aristide supporters.
As Aristide spent his first day in exile, his home in
the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre was looted and
trashed. Pictures, documents and a grand piano
were dragged out onto the courtyard of the
three-story villa, then abandoned.
Family and school pictures lay among the disorder.
Broken plates littered the area by the pool. Books
strewn about included several written by Aristide
and one about Marcus Garvey, a black nationalist
leader from Jamaica.
Not everyone was happy to see the rebels in the
capital. Some residents watched indifferently, their
arms folded, as their convoy passed. At one point,
the convoy stopped and rebels jumped out, sweeping
their weapons from side to side, then moved on.
Philippe, formerly a provincial police chief and an
officer in the army when it repressed dissident
politicians, first went to the national police
headquarters.
Many of the rebels then settled into the nearby
former headquarters of the army. The rebels, many
of them former soldiers, have said they want to
reconstitute the army.
"It's symbolic. It's the headquarters of the army," said
Paul Arcelin, a midlevel rebel commander.
There, Chamblain denied in an interview that he had
murdered anyone.
"I'm not a terrorist, and I'm not a criminal," he said,
adding: "The bones of my so-called victims - where
are they?"
Among those at the hotel meeting with the rebel
leader was Evans Paul, a former mayor of
Port-au-Prince and a top opposition figure. Paul said
Philippe "has played an important role."
Industrialist Charles Henry Baker, an opposition
leader, said Philippe offered his troops to help
maintain order amid reports of continued looting in
the capital. Baker said his group welcomed the offer.
One young rebel standing outside the meeting freely
told a reporter he shot people and predicted militant
members of Aristide's Lavalas party would be
executed.
"I shot some looters yesterday. They have to be shot,"
the rebel who goes by the nom-de-guerre "Faustin,"
said as he stood outside the meeting in a black flak
vest, cradling an M-4 assault rifle.
"There are some very minimal numbers of Lavalas
who cannot be saved," he said, adding that the vast
majority would be spared.
Col. David Berger, head of the U.S. Marine
contingent, said 150 Marines had arrived overnight
from 8th Battalion, based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., to
"secure key sites in the capital."
"People who interfere with that mission, we will
handle with appropriate force," Berger told AP.
At the airport, U.S. and French military commanders
huddled over a map of Port-au-Prince as a French
military attache pointed out locations where armed
pro-Aristide militants have been known to gather.
U.S. Marines set up a security perimeter at the
airport, kneeling in the grass as about 80 French
Marines arrived in C-160 transport planes. The
French Marines' supplies included crates of bottled
Evian water.
An AP reporter traveled with the rebels, including
Philippe, when their convoy set out before dawn from
Gonaives. In St. Marc, a town which had been
contested during the uprising, the convoy passed
three charred bodies on the road.
___
AP reporters Mark Stevenson and Joseph B. Frazier
in Port-au-Prince, and Joseph Benamsse in Bangui,
Central African Republic, contributed to this report. |
