Case of Ex-rebel Leader Looms Over Haiti

Justice Uncertain After Surrender

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Louis Jodel Chamblain turned himself in to Haitian authorities in April for his alleged role in assassinating more than two dozen people by calling a press conference and publicly declaring his innocence.

''I'm handing myself over to be a prisoner so that Haiti has a chance for the real democracy that I am fighting for, for the real justice for which I have always fought," a tearful Chamblain, a former army sergeant and rebel commander, told reporters who had gathered as police waited outside for him.

The case against Chamblain is only one of the myriad challenges facing Haiti's new US-backed government, which has taken over this Caribbean nation since the Feb. 29 ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Rebels, many of them former military personnel who faced charges during the Aristide government, remain in control of several provinces, especially in the north of the country. Some have been accused of drug trafficking, others of corruption and insubordination.

One US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that some of the rebel forces supported their activity through drug trafficking. ''That's how they staged the operation. They were more drug traffickers than they were rebels," the official said.

To his supporters, Chamblain is a hero, a man who risked his life to help remove the Aristide government, which increasingly had come under allegations of corruption. To his detractors, Chamblain is a vicious assassin. For Haiti, he is a test of a weak and decrepit justice system and a challenge to a fragile peace that sometimes appears held together with duct tape.

''There are strong indications that Haiti doesn't have a justice system," said Robert Fatton, a political science professor and specialist on Haiti at the University of Virginia. ''And [what to do with] Chamblain is the most obvious symbol of that problem."

Before turning into a rebel, Chamblain was a soldier and a paramilitary leader. In the 1980s, he worked with the Tonton Macoutes, state-sponsored militia groups that terrorized government opponents with threats and assassinations. Following a military coup against Aristide in 1991, Chamblain helped run the Front for the Advancement of Haitian People, a brutal militia accused of murdering scores of Aristide supporters.

''He was the operations guy," explained Brian Concannon, a US lawyer who helped prosecute Chamblain after Aristide was restored to power in 1994. ''Chamblain was the one who organized the head-banging."

Those operations included the killing of some 25 people in a slum in northern Haiti and the assassination of a prominent Aristide supporter. Chamblain was convicted in absentia for these crimes. He fled to the Dominican Republic, while several of his coconspirators, including various high-level military personnel, went to jail for them.

When Chamblain returned from the Dominican Republic with his rebel cohorts earlier this year, he called for Haitian people to put Aristide on trial and justified his previous activities in the Front for the Advancement of Haitian People by explaining that Aristide supporters had clubbed his pregnant wife to death.

Unlike Chamblain, most of these former prisoners remain at large. Many believe that Chamblain made a deal with the government to guarantee his own freedom.

''There are concerns that it [the handover] might have been staged with some hidden quid pro quo," said Alex Stepick, a sociology professor at Florida International University.

The Haitian government has pledged to seek justice for all. It must also decide how it will disarm these rebels and whether it's willing to integrate them into the new security force it's building.

Both challenges are monumental tasks for Haiti's depleted government, which depends heavily on foreign assistance. Since Aristide's fall from power, the United States has given $60 million and pledged another $100 million. A multinational security force of several thousand troops is providing security, without which the country could collapse into anarchy, observers say.

Constitutionally, Chamblain and the others convicted in absentia have a right to a new trial. But Concannon doubts a second conviction would be possible. Concannon, who left Haiti after eight years when Aristide resigned, said that witnesses against Chamblain have been threatened and a former prosecutor's house was burned when rebels rolled through the city streets following Aristide's departure.

"[Chamblain] was convicted under a fair trial," Concannon said by telephone from Oregon. ''Now he's going to get out because of a corrupt system. He's not going to get anyone to testify against him; there's no one who is going to prosecute him."

Another rebel leader, former police commander Guy Philippe, was accused of plotting to overthrow the Aristide government twice. Philippe may be one of many to protest if the former paramilitary commander is convicted.

''Those guys are no saints," said Fatton, referring to the rebels. ''If they see that Chamblain may end up in jail, they may have no confidence in the new government, and they may strike. What we have is a management of the crisis, but nothing has been resolved."

©Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

By Steven Dudley
Globe Correspondent
June 20, 2004