Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 26, 1994 TAG: 9409260064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CAP-HAITIEN, HAITI LENGTH: Long
Meanwhile, a Marine colonel backtracked on the official version that Haitians fired first in the gunfight outside a police station in which 10 Haitians died. It was the first violent clash involving American troops sent to restore the elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
``One of our patrols saw a gesture by an individual with an Uzi machine gun. He took that individual out, and a firefight began,'' said Col. Tom Jones, commanding officer of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force.
``The lieutenant shot him when he made a gesture to raise his Uzi,'' Jones continued. As to who fired first - Lt. Virg Palumbo, 24, of Windber, Pa., or the Haitian forces - ``I can't say that,'' Jones added.
The shootings and the mayhem that followed showed how easily the situation can flare out of control and raised the possibility that U.S. troops may find themselves confronted with an unwelcome choice: watching Haiti sink into chaos, or taking on the unwanted role of running the country directly - something neither the United States nor Aristide wants.
After the fight, police and soldiers abandoned the city's main military barracks, police station and about a dozen smaller posts. Word spread quickly to the streets, bringing hundreds out to trash the property of those who had ruled over them.
At the main military barracks, Haitians took everything they could get their hands on, even tubas and trombones. They played the instruments in the streets as crowds gathered outside.
Some people fired guns into the air, but many appeared to be handing the weapons over to some of the 1,900 U.S. Marines in Cap-Haitien. One man displayed tarnished bullets from an M-1 assault rifle clip, which he handed to Marines in an armored personnel carrier.
``I give, I give!'' he cried.
Hundreds of civilians holding rifles over their heads paraded to the bloodstained police barracks where the Haitians died and handed the weapons over to Marines. More than 100 rifles, machetes and rusted-out machine guns were surrendered.
One civilian even handed over a skull with a bullet hole.
``These people are really happy today, but they're still scared,'' said Lance Cpl. Darin Mendoza of Miami. ``They're telling us they want us to stay for another 20 years.''
Marines set up checkpoints across the city, trying to keep the chaotic scene from turning dangerous.
Near police headquarters, a group of Haitians grabbed a man and dragged him into a house, apparently believing he was an ``attache,'' the civilian strongmen backed by police. ``He will be judged,'' said one man.
In another case, a crowd approached a Marine checkpoint and said they had captured an attache.
``I told them to go get him, tie him up and bring him in - but don't hit him,'' said Petersan Jean-Pierre, a Navy seaman attached to the Marines as a translator.
Haitian army commander Raoul Cedras and Lt. Gen. Hugh Shelton, commander of the U.S. operation in Haiti, flew together to Cap-Haitien for a brief inspection tour Sunday.
Col. Jones said the Haitian commander was seething.
``Cedras accused us of atrocities and demanded my transfer and court-martial,'' Col. Jones said.
By late afternoon, that obviously had not happened.
American servicemen and a source close to the Haitian military initially said the Haitians opened fire first in Saturday night's gunbattle, which broke out after an Echo Company platoon on its evening patrol stopped across the street from the police barracks.
``Four guys came out from the front desk, saw us and got spooked and lit up their weapons,'' said Cpl. Mike Arnett, a member of the platoon. ``And we returned fire.''
Carl Denis, a senior aide to Cedras, said he believed the Haitian who fired thought he was shooting at another Haitian, not at American troops.
The firefight was followed by a siege as Marines tried to persuade two wounded men inside the station to give themselves up.
Marines had cleared the building by Sunday morning. They did not say what had happened to the two holdouts, but raised the death toll from nine to 10 and said another Haitian had been seriously wounded.
The gunbattle followed a slow escalation in tension between Marines and Haitian security forces. Marine patrols had been increased and units were given more latitude to take action against Haitian forces following intelligence reports that attaches were planning to attack Marines, the Marines said.
At Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, 211 Haitian refugees headed back by boat to their homeland on a Coast Guard cutter Sunday night, the first group to return since U.S. troops moved into Haiti.
Seeing them off was Air Force Chaplain Capt. Effson C. Bryant. He said the refugees he'd spoken to were upset about the agreement reached with the help of former President Carter, which doesn't require the outgoing military leaders to leave Haiti.
``If it wasn't for that, they would be leaving by the hundreds,'' Bryant said.
Also Sunday, Haitian and U.S. women's and human rights groups said the Inter-American Human Rights Commission will be asked to declare Haiti's military leaders accountable for systematic rape and other violence against women and to press for compensation.
They said they intend to present evidence to a closed hearing at headquarters of the Organization of American States today proving responsibility for rights violations by Cedras and others.
One woman who hopes to testify, Alerte Belance, 32, said paramilitary soldiers hacked and beat her with machetes last Oct. 16, then left her for dead in some bushes.
But ``God left me to the world in my condition to let it know what is happening,'' said Belance. ``I am sure the OAS already knows, but I will go there to remind them.'' She lost her right hand and lower arm in what she described as an effort to ward off the attack.
The troops were seeking Belance's husband, a known supporter of Aristide, she said.
Neighbors found her in the bushes, and sneaked her to a hospital near Port-au-Prince where surgeons amputated her torn hand and repaired machete slashes on her face, tongue and neck.
by CNB