Free Republic

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - A jury acquitted former paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain of murder charges Tuesday after a secretive trial that began in the middle of the night, angering human rights groups who blamed the country's U.S.-backed government. Chamblain and co-defendent Jackson Joanis were acquitted just after dawn in the murder of Antoine Izmery, a former justice minister and financier of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to Stanley Gaston, an attorney for Chamblain. Three witnesses were called during the one-day trial, and only one of them was for the prosecution, said Viles Alizar with the National Coalition for Haitian Rights....

Haiti Rebel Leader Wants to Kill Enemy Aristide Sun Mar 28, 2004 01:41 PM ET By Simon Gardner PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - A notorious Haitian paramilitary leader who helped lead a bloody revolt that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide says he will kill the former president if he ever returns from exile. "If Aristide comes tomorrow I will have 15,000, 20,000 Haitians armed to fight him and kill him as he killed my wife," Louis Jodel Chamblain, accused of heading death squads during years of dictatorship and military rule in the late 1980s and early 1990s, told Reuters. The former army officer...