Spring Break
Haitian rebels occupy police headquarters
By: Paisley Dodds and Ian James — The Associated Press
Issue date: 3/2/04 Section: News
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 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.
But a half dozen U.S. Marines guarded the National Palace at the Champs de Mars plaza, 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.
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