On April 22, 1994, during the darkest days of the first coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, paramilitary gunmen and soldiers chased down and executed a score of men in the seaside shanty town of Raboteau in Haiti’s northwestern city of Gonaïves. Dozens of men and women were also beaten and wounded in the attack.

Ten years later, during the second coup against Aristide, one of the masterminds of that massacre turned himself over to a de facto government which calls him a “freedom fighter” and asked for a new trial.

In November 2000, Louis Jodel Chamblain, the vice-president of the notorious paramilitary death-squad FRAPH (Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti), was convicted in absentia by a Haitian jury to life in prison for his role as operations commander of the paramilitaries which carried out the Raboteau massacre.

At the time, Chamblain was living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and plotting the overthrow of the yet to be elected and inaugurated Aristide. In February 2004, Chamblain entered Haiti from the DR at the head of a tiny column of Dominican-backed “rebels” and joined with another former Haitian Army officer, Guy Philippe, in occupying the cities of Gonaïves and Cap Haïtien with a handful of men after scaring off the largely complicit or unarmed Haitian police force.

Despite his usefulness as a symbol to terrorize and immobilize the Haitian people, Chamblain was something of an embarrassment to Washington. They continued to hold him and the other “rebels” at arm’s length, at least when the cameras were rolling.

But on April 22, 2004, in a show carefully orchestrated with de facto Justice Minister Bernard Gousse and de facto Haitian National Police chief Léon Charles, Chamblain held a press conference at the luxury Kinam Hotel across the street from the Pétionville police station.

“Neither myself, commander Guy Philippe, nor the other commanders of the revolution, have ever been afraid of Jean Bertrand Aristide,” Chamblain tearfully declared to the press. “I was armed with courage to carry out the revolution which has led to the freeing of the Haitian students, the Haitian intellectual class and Haiti as a whole. And since I have been subject to several charges, I am girding myself with the same courage to present myself to the whole world with a conscience in peace and hands clean and empty... I am willing to turn myself in so as to give a chance for the construction of the democracy for which I fight and for the establishment of justice in the country. These are the reasons for my sacrifice today.”

Chamblain had met with Gousse and Charles the previous day to arrange his theatrical “surrender.” According to his lawyer Stanley Gaston, Chamblain’s gesture “automatically annuls” the ruling handed down in 2000. The Haitian constitution allows retrials for fifteen years after an in absentia verdict.

“I think he sees the opportunity to get a sympathetic judge to dismiss the charges against him,” said Brian Concannon, a U.S. lawyer who advised the Haitian legal team that prosecuted Chamblain in the Raboteau trial. “Also, as a convicted criminal at the top echelons of the current de facto government, he is embarrassing to that government and to the U.S.. Rather than get rid of a criminal, they are trying to make the criminal look like he’s not a criminal.”

De facto Justice Minister Gousse was clearly satisfied that the scene played out as scripted. “Security involves not only repression, but it’s also a matter of persuasion, a matter of trust in the legal system,” he declared. After the press conference, Charles with a squad of policemen, accompanied Chamblain across the street to the Pétionville jail, where he will likely enjoy deluxe accommodations.

Pro-coup “human rights” groups, like the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights of Jean Claude Bajeux, applauded Chamblain’s gesture as an act of wisdom.

But the September 30 Foundation, the most persistent defender of 1991 coup victims, said that Chamblain had simply struck a deal with the government of de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue. “Ten years after Raboteau, we do not understand how the legal apparatus is negotiating with a criminal against whom justice has already pronounced a sentence,” said Wilson Mésilien, a foundation spokesman.

In September 1995, Chamblain was also convicted in absentia to life imprisonment for his involvement in the Sep. 11, 1993 murder of democracy activist Antoine Izméry.

Another victim of FRAPH under Chamblain’s leadership was Haitian Justice Minister Guy Malary, who was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his body-guard and a driver on October 14, 1993. According to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights: “FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary.” Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the president of FRAPH, has enjoyed political asylum in the U.S. since 1996 and is living in Queens, NY.

There are reports that Jean Jean-Baptiste, known as Jean Tatoune, will also seek to overturn his conviction in the Raboteau trial. But, as Amnesty International has noted, he is not eligible for retrial since he was present in the courtroom for his trial in 2000.

Tatoune escaped from prison in August 2002 and was one of the leaders of the destabilization campaign against Haiti’s constitutional government.

Concannon says that Chamblain’s move “wasn’t a surprise” to him and his team of human rights lawyers. “We actually expected that as soon as there was an undemocratic government in place that these guys would come in to try to get the convictions removed. But these cases took a long time to build up, and a lot of people sacrificed and worked for six years for the Raboteau case to go to trial. For it to be erased with the quick pen stroke of a judge will obviously be a disappointment for the victims and for everybody that worked on the case.”

Concannon also outlined four reasons why “under the current circumstances, any case against [Chamblain] will be a travesty. First, the victims are in hiding because his allies have been terrorizing them. Second, the de facto Justice Minister publicly said earlier this week that Chamblain has nothing to hide, which makes it clear that the Justice Minister intends to do a whitewash. Third, the judge in the Raboteau case was beaten up by Chamblain’s people on March 30, so obviously you’re not going to have a judge that will follow the case seriously. And finally, the house of the Raboteau trial’s lead prosecutor was burned down in February. So it’s unlikely that you’re going to have a zealous prosecutor take this case.”