NEPTUNE... being held in connection with the mid-February killings of several Aristide opponents

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - The premier of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was detained yesterday on suspicion of orchestrating killings during the February rebellion, authorities said. Others said Yvon Neptune turned himself in voluntarily.

Neptune was detained at his home in the capital, Port-au-Prince, Police Chief Leon Charles told private Radio Vision 2000.
Police officials said he was being held at the national penitentiary.
"There was no resistance," Charles told the radio station.
An official of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, former legislator Gilvert Angervil, said Neptune turned himself in because he knew authorities were looking for him.

Human rights activist Pierre Esperance said he met with Neptune shortly after he was taken to the prison. Neptune told him he met with police "with the objective of turning himself in", said Esperance, who runs the Port-au-Prince office of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights.
Neptune is being held in connection with the mid-February killings of several Aristide opponents in St Marc, a western port where violence flared during the uprising that forced Aristide from power and killed at least 300 people.

As rebels neared St Marc and police fled the city, Neptune flew there in a helicopter with police reinforcements February 8, according to witnesses and reporters who were there at the time. On February 9, police moved on a seaside neighbourhood known to house government opponents and acted as shields for members of the pro-Aristide "Clean Sweep" gang who followed them, set homes aflame and gunned down people trying to escape the blazes, according to witnesses including American missionary Terry Snow.
Some residents jumped into the sea to get away from gunmen who shot into the air to stop them returning to land, Snow said at the time.

Neptune is the highest ranking official to be detained since Aristide's departure February 29. In late March, police arrested Amanus Mayette, a former Aristide legislator and alleged leader of "Clean Sweep".
Lavalas officials have charged that party supporters are being killed by anti-Aristide forces and that the US-backed government of interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue is conducting a witchhunt against them with the arrests of several officials on alleged suspicion of corruption and killings of rivals.

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