Aristide allies recaptured, back in prison

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Two key allies of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were back in their prison cells yesterday amid conflicting accounts of who was responsible for their breakout with 480 other prisoners on Saturday by a handful of heavily armed gunmen.

Police spokeswoman Gessy Coicou said former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert had escaped in the Saturday prison break and were recaptured by police.

But Damian Onses-Cardona, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, said the two had sought refuge in the house of a third prisoner, where they contacted the United Nations and asked to be returned to the national penitentiary.

The prison break was portrayed by local media as an attempt to free the two leaders of Mr. Aristide's Lavalas party. But U.N. Civilian Police (CIVPOL) Commissioner David Beer said the assailants were likely "chimeres" -- or armed gangs who were seeking to free fellow gang members.

One senior police official said on the condition of anonymity that he suspected former soldiers were behind the prison break.

It is not clear how such a massive prison break could have taken place in broad daylight just three blocks from the national palace and police headquarters in downtown Port-au-Prince, where 125 U.N. riot police and dozens of Haitian police officers stand guard.

Nor is it clear how the handful of assailants -- witnesses in front of the penitentiary said they saw only one vehicle and several gunmen -- managed to get past about 40 prison guards and free nearly 500 of the more than 1,200 prisoners in the penitentiary -- all before the police and U.N. troops arrived.

Marie-Yolene Gilles, an observer for the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, who had access to the penitentiary yesterday, said six hooded gunmen dressed in black entered the prison. One off-duty prison guard was shot and killed outside the penitentiary, but no guards inside were killed or injured by the assailants.

Prison authorities refused to allow a reporter to visit the penitentiary yesterday and Claude Theodat, the chief of Haiti's prison system, did not return phone calls.

In the strongly pro-Aristide neighborhood of Bel Air, one man who claimed to have escaped from the penitentiary said the prison guards opened the cells and told the prisoners to leave.

Reynold Georges, a politician and lawyer who represents more than 20 prisoners, said several of his clients who escaped told him the attackers were dressed in black and appeared to be police officers.

Reached on his cell phone, penitentiary Warden Sony Marcellus said he was being held in an isolation cell in the Port-au-Prince police station, but did not say why. He said he had heard gunshots from his office in the penitentiary at 3:15 p.m., but he declined to provide further details.

Port-au-Prince Police Chief Renan Etienne said nobody from the prison called on Saturday asking for backup. Even though his office is three blocks from the prison, he said he knew nothing of the breakout until 4 p.m., when a police officer in the area called to tell him prisoners were escaping.

Haitian media have been critical of the police for failing to capture Remissainthe Ravix, an anti-Aristide leader of some 2,000 former soldiers who is accused of killing four police officers.

Until the killing of the police officers, the government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, backed by the U.N. peacekeeping force, had aggressively combated pro-Aristide armed groups in the slums of Port-au-Prince, while doing little to stop the illegally armed former soldiers.