Chamblain. won't be sidelined in the new government

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A convicted assassin who led army death squads and is accused of ordering hundreds of executions has stepped into Haiti's political arena, vowing to bring law and order.

Dogged by a list of human rights violations, Louis-Jodel Chamblain is keeping out of the political limelight, but says he won't be sidelined in the new government.

"What's mine is mine," Chamblain told The Associated Press inside the old headquarters of Haiti's disbanded army, where rebels are setting up their headquarters. "I'm commanding operations."
A semblance of order has been restored since the rebels launched a popular uprising nearly a month ago and Jean-Bertrand Aristide left Haiti last Sunday amid mounting international and domestic pressure, but no one is certain who the law really is in Haiti today.

International peace-keepers have no mandate to disarm civilians or rebels. Several police officers, who were recent targets of the rebels, are now hobnobbing with them. Chief rebel leader Guy Philippe announced he was "military chief" Tuesday, and ordered police commanders to meet with him or he'd arrest them.

"We see only one sector (the rebels) arresting people," complained Jean-Fritz Magni, a policeman in charge of an officers' association. "The way I see it is they are replacing absolutism with absolutism. And that's what we were fighting against."

As corpses continue to show up on the streets and reports surface of vengeful attacks against members of Aristide's Government, human rights groups are pressing interim leaders to rethink their position with rebel leaders like Chamblain.

"These are the death squad people. These are the killers. These are the people I tried to prosecute in the 1990s," said human rights lawyer Michael Ratner, of the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York City.
Four bodies were spotted last Monday on a dirt road, three shot in the head execution-style, hands tied behind their backs. Two more bodies were on the street Tuesday, and six with gunshot wounds were brought to the morgue during the day.

"We see it as a very disturbing portent for Haiti's future," said Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch. "There's a potential for a cycle of violence." She noted that her organisation had already received reports of reprisals against Aristide Government officials, including the sacking of homes belonging to former Haitian Police Chief Jocelyn Pierre and Government spokesman Mario Dupuy.
Chamblain said he's never killed anyone and is against executions.

But he allegedly ran death squads in the last years of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's dictatorship in the late 1980s, and is notorious for his role in the paramilitary Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People, or FRAPH. The acronym in French means "to thrash".

Chamblain was the number 2 man in the FRAPH death squad which participated in the campaign of terror during the 1991 coup against Aristide.
Terrorising supporters of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, the group was blamed for thousands of killings before a US intervention ended three years of military rule in 1994.
"I am scared of what I did, not of what I didn't do," Chamblain told the AP. "I never committed murder. I am not a terrorist. I am not a drug dealer. I am not a criminal."

He was, however, convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for the September 11, 1993 murder of Aristide financier Antoine Izmery, who was dragged from Mass in a church, made to kneel outside and shot.
Chamblain was also convicted for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of Raboteau.
A CIA intelligence memorandum implicated him in the October 14, 1993 assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary who, with his bodyguard, was ambushed and machine-gunned.

According to the CIA memorandum, dated October 28, 1993, and obtained by the Centre 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 was the founder of FRAPH.

A sergeant in the Haitian army and a member of the elite Corps des Leopards, Chamblain left the army in the late 1980s and reappeared in 1993 as FRAPH's co-founder.
According to Human Rights watch, Chamblain had been living in the Dominican Republic with about 25 other commandos. They were well equipped with rifles, camouflage uniforms, and all-terrain vehicles, the rights group said.

Chamblain said there was no proof for the allegations and he was merely a commander, something that his detractors say could be true.
"He talks a lot but works in the shadows," said another man who worked with Chamblain, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He was involved - but he didn't pull the trigger."
- Associated Press and the
Sunday Observer

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World