[Cerchio] MASKED MEN MASSACRE SLUM DWELLERS

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MASKED MEN MASSACRE SLUM DWELLERS

Men dressed as police carried out two massacres of 17 people last week
in and around the rebellious Bel-air slum of Port-au-Prince, sowing
terror throughout the capital.

On the afternoon of Oct. 26, masked men dressed in the black uniforms of
Haitian riot police executed 13 people from the Rue EstimÈ quarter of
Fort National near Bel-air. Some of the victims were killed in the slum
while others were driven to and executed at Titanyen, a desolate dumping
ground just north of the capital. Three of the victims were young women.

According to witnesses, the killers pulled up in four vehicles with
Police plates in front of the house on Rue EstimÈ. They were accompanied
by an ambulance.

"There were more than a dozen people in there talking when the police
burst in," the owner of the house where the incident happened told the
Haiti Press Network. "The men dressed in black burst in and opened
fire... Those young people often met here. But they had no weapons. If
they had some or were suspected of being implicated in dishonest acts, I
would not have tolerated them in my house."

According to people in the area, nothing was happening in this
neighborhood that day to justify police action. "The people killed were
doing nothing in particular; they were smoking maybe," one area resident
told Radio Kiskeya. "They were maybe the members of a group of chimPres
[the epithet for armed Lavalas partisans], I don't know, but it is sure
that they were not armed and were not creating any disorder. How could
they when they were inside a house? And, even if they were causing
trouble, they could have arrested them as troublemakers but not executed
all those people."

One of the young people arrested and taken to Titanyen managed to
escape."We were more than a dozen together when they arrived in Fort
National, and they executed several of us," the escapee told Radio Ginen
the next day. "I was lucky enough to find myself among those that they
took to Titanyen. When we arrived there, they ordered us to lie on the
ground. That's when I took off running to escape certain death."

Police authorities deny any knowledge of or involvement in the massacre.
The departmental director of the Haitian National Police (PNH), Renan
Etienne, insisted that he ordered no deployment to the Fort National
neighborhood on the day of the massacre.

In a press conference two days later, police spokeswoman Jessie Cameau
Coicou said she learned of the massacre from a radio report. "I
contacted the police units carrying out operations that day, but there
was no reported incident in Fort National, and there was not any police
action in this neighborhood," she said. The police would cooperate with
any Justice Ministry investigation into the massacre, she said. But a
week later, at press time, no investigation has been opened.

De facto Prime Minister GÈrard Latortue also shucked off any police
responsibility for the massacre. "I can assure you categorically of that
for a fact," he told The Associated Press. "We have nothing to do with
that."

He went on to blame partisans of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
for the killings. "These black uniforms, you can buy them anywhere," he
said, adding that it was "part of the orchestrated campaign by people
close to Aristide" to destabilize his government.

On Oct. 28, four other youths were found executed on Rue PÈan in the
Bel-air neighborhood. Two of the victims had their hand tied. One of the
victims was shirtless, suggesting that he had been abducted from or near
his home.

"Six police cars came up here with about 15 officers," one of the
witnesses told a New York Times reporter. "They took the men out of the
cars, put them on the ground and shot them in the head."

The Times reported that Coicou also "categorically" denied police
involvement in the shooting, blaming instead "renegade police units" or
"death squads posing as police officers."

Some observers have speculated that the masked men may be former Haitian
soldiers posing as policemen. The former soldiers have been demanding
back pay and reinstitution of the army dissolved by Aristide in 1995, as
well as a greater role in putting down the growing rebellion in the
Haitian capital.

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