First the rebels handed the station over to police officers. Angry civilians started protesting about police abuses, scaring the officers away. Then the French moved, rifles at the ready, and persuaded frightened officers to return.
Monday's events in Cap-Haitien are a sorry example of the instability that seems the most predictable factor in Haiti one month after the hasty departure of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the arrival of US-led peacekeepers.
"If the police try to get rid of the rebels, we will attack the police," threatened resident Joabilien Saint-Fidor, among about 100 people shouting "Down with the police! Long live the army!"
He seemed as little concerned as Haiti's new US-backed government by past abuses committed by ex-soldiers among rebel leaders, including convicted assassin Louis-Jodel Chamblain. Chamblain continued talks on Monday on cooperation between the police and rebels in northern Haiti, and had a hasty conference with French peacekeepers after people started protesting.
At the same time, flexing the superior muscle of the rebels who outgun and outnumber Haiti's demoralized police force, he vowed to kill Aristide if he returns from exile.
A US-backed government installed three weeks ago appears so indebted to the rebels it hails as "freedom fighters" that it has made no move to disarm them, even while its officials insist all factions in Haiti must lay down their weapons.
Aristide supporters in Cap-Haitien are in hiding as they are in the capital, Port-au-Prince, where ousted officials charge they are being hounded by the new government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue. A returnee from decades in exile, Latortue reneged on a promise to include in his government Aristide's Lavalas Family party, which remains the largest movement in the country.
On Monday, the Coalition for Haitian Rights reported that authorities had detained a senior police officer suspected in a March 7 armed attack on anti-Aristide protesters in which seven people were killed.
Police Inspector Jean Michel Gaspard worked at the same Port-au-Prince station as five officers detained last week on suspicion of killing five Aristide supporters, the rights group reported.
In Cap-Haitien, Chamblain ordered rebels who still control much of northern Haiti to stop patrolling the streets and hand over two police stations.
But officers abandoned one after agitated residents began protesting, saying the officers had armed Aristide militants who terrorized them. About 20 French troops took over the station, with rifles at the ready, and convinced nervous officers to return.
Chamblain said he was not prepared to make any concessions to Aristide, whom he claimed had sent henchmen to kill his pregnant wife in 1991.
"We're enemies," said Chamblain. "If Aristide was here right now, I would do to him exactly what he had the courage to do to my wife and unborn child."
RSS