This week in Haiti
Commission Investigating July 28 Attacks
Recommends... an Investigation
Only two weeks after its appointment, an official commission investigating recent armed attacks on Haitian police installations delivered its report to Haitian Justice Minister Gary Lissade.
The report merely reiterated events as they have been presented since the first hours of the affair: at around 3 a.m. on Jul. 28, six to eight armed individuals dressed in the olive-green uniforms of the former army attacked the Pétionville police station and the National Police Academy in the Frères suburb of the capital (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 20, 8/1/2001). Similar attacks took place at the same time in Mirebalais and in Hinche, leaving a total of five dead and fourteen wounded among police officers and cadets.
What was behind the offensive? The report comes with two hypotheses: 1: an attempted coup d'état 2: the beginning of an armed struggle by former Haitian soldiers. The commission of inquiry based its first hypothesis on the late hour of the attack and its proximity to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's residence in Tabarre, located only a few kilometers from the police academy. The second hypothesis was formed because the assailants searched for and seized heavy weapons and called on former soldiers to reoccupy police stations, which were previously the barracks of the disbanded Haitian Armed Forces (FAdH).
Clearly, a report which offers only hypotheses is proof that the investigation remains incomplete. Even the report's authors seemed to agree. "The commission proposes... the institution of a new commission of support whose essential role would be to assist judicial authorities in conducting their investigation, to designate and recommend when needed certain courses, taking into account new facts and discoveries which might emerge in the short or medium term," read an Aug. 10 press release signed by the five members of the commission of inquiry. They are Secretary of State for Public Safety Jean Gérard Dubreuil (president), two police inspector generals, Jean Victor Harvel Jean Baptiste and Fred Manigat, prosecutor Josué Pierre-Louis, and former Haitian Army general Wilthan Lhérisson.
In the wake of the attacks and mounting suspicion of collusion from within the Haitian National Police (PNH), the government arrested some police officials. The ex-director of the police academy, division chief Jean Yonel Trécil, was arrested and held in isolation at a PNH headquarters until his release over the weekend. A warrant also went out for his successor, Max St. Joie, who was nonetheless able to elude authorities and fly to Miami. Meanwhile, authorities kept division chief Mario Andrésol in detention even though it has filed no charges against him and despite a judge's ruling for his release. Authorities have argued that the arrests and detentions are necessary given the gravity of the charges of overthrow and murder.
The commission of inquiry's report points to apparent complicity of forces within the police. For instance, the assailants displayed a perfect knowledge of the large police academy grounds. As a result, other police chiefs and inspectors are being questioned, put in isolation, or put under close watch.
Corruption and infiltration of the PNH is no surprise. Since it replaced the FAdH in 1995, the PNH was designed, formed and trained by U.S. government agencies, which insisted on integrating many former Haitian soldiers. In 1996, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, then a consultant in President René Préval's cabinet, declared that "the C.I.A. is present within the police, it is present in all parts" (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 13, No. 46, 2/7/1996).
Aristide's Lavalas Family party accepted the report even though some, like Senator Gérald Gilles, asked that the investigation be deepened. Gilles shared the report's hypothesis of a coup d'état à la Kabila but estimated that there were more than six to eight assailants on Jul. 28. "This is of course just a partial report which the commission has issued," Gilles said, "and we would ask the government to be much more vigilant so that those who tried to make this coup don't feel at ease to continue."
The Democratic Convergence (CD) opposition front backhanded the report as incomplete and imprecise. From the start, the CD called for the formation of a commission of inquiry independent from the government, which it accuses of wanting to fabricate events to justify suspension of negotiations and repression of its political adversaries. "One can say that this report is just generalities and hypotheses," said Gérard Pierre-Charles of the OPL/CD. "First off, it supports the thesis of a coup d'état on the grounds that the events took place near the house of the president at 3 a.m., as if there were a precise time to make coup d'états. Secondly, it is mostly hypotheses. For us, it's not serious; a commission should give information about these troubling events to people waiting for it, but it limits itself to hypotheses. There is no new fact, there was no questioning. This tells us that it is simply a maneuver, a simple declaration with no value which might shed light on the events." Pierre-Charles concluded by rehashing opposition charges that the attacks may have merely been the settling of scores among drug dealers or an internal conflict, accusations taken seriously by nobody other than visiting U.S. Republican congressmen.
This week authorities did bring to court 11 people arrested in Belladères in connection with the attacks. Eight were freed and three held for further prosecution. In Croix-des-Bouquets, two former soldiers accused of wanting to participate in an assault on the police station there appeared in court. The local judge did not charge them but instead sent them to appear in court in the capital.
U.S. Ambassador Brian Dean Curran clumsily revealed his sympathies for the opposition by offering perfunctory disapproval of attacks and then launching a frontal attack on the Haitian government's attempts at self-defense, justice, and reestablishing public order. "These events do not justify the arbitrary arrests, detentions, and political murders which followed," Curran said on Aug. 2. "The United States calls on the Haitian government to stop the illegal and arbitrary arrests and to put an end to the slaughter."
Such arrogance and trampling of diplomatic protocol prodded Information Minister Guy Paul to respond. "They have really gone overboard," Paul remarked. "The embassy or the ambassador should come indicate to us where exactly the slaughters were committed and the illegal and arbitrary arrests made."
The rebuke had little effect on the ambassador. On Aug. 8, Curran held a number of interviews and meetings in Miami's Haitian community, an unprecedented public relations move by Washington. But the gambit backfired when Curran enraged the community with his comments."The Aristide government is arresting and killing many members of the opposition," he claimed on a morning Haitian radio program. "That has to stop. He has to stop with this question of investigating the events of Jul. 28 so that negotiations [with the U.S. financed CD opposition front] can get underway again."
At an event later that afternoon Curran reportedly said: "The U.S. government is going to unblock $70 million for Haiti, but only non-governmental organizations will receive that money. Then, we'll see what Aristide is going to do with his police!"
These arrogant remarks ignited such outrage and anger in Miami's Haitian community that later the same day 200 people held a boisterous protest outside the North Miami Museum of Art where Curran held another meeting.
Meanwhile, the former soldiers who carried out the Jul. 28 attacks took refuge with their arms and booty in the Dominican Republic, where they requested protection from the Dominican government and army. Indeed, they received royal treatment. When three of the assailants, carrying M-14 automatic weapons, arrived in Elias Piñas (across the border from Belladères), they were flown by helicopter to the Dominican armed forces headquarters where functionaries from the Dominican Foreign Ministry paid them a visit.
Last year, some other would-be coup-makers, a group of police chiefs called the "Ecuadorians," were also sheltered by Dominican authorities (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No. 32 10/25/2000). It seems that any forces launching attacks against the Haitian government become the darlings of the Dominican authorities, in particular the army, which acts in close concert with the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA. These agencies of Washington seem to be conferring on the Dominican Republic the role of sub-regional policeman. Although Haitian Foreign Minister Joseph Philippe Antonio and his Dominican counterpart Alberto Despradel Cabral are to hold talks, it seems doubtful that the Jul. 28 assailants will be extradited back to Haiti, since the Dominican Republic now appears to be a base for regional destabilization under the direction of Washington.
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