HAITI: SECURITY FORCES FOIL ATTEMPTED COUP BID AGAINST PRESIDENT JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE

Record ID: 344917

  • Title: HAITI: SECURITY FORCES FOIL ATTEMPTED COUP BID AGAINST PRESIDENT JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE
  • Date: 19th December 2001
  • Summary: (W1)PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI (DECEMBER 17, 2001) (REUTERS) 1. SLV ZOOM IN HAITIANS MARCHING IN STREET AS SMOKE BILLOWS IN BACKGROUND 0.06 2. MV SECURITY VEHICLE OUTSIDE PALACE; SLV HAITIANS AT PALACE GATES; SLV PALACE SECURITY FORCES ON SCENE (3 SHOTS) 0.30 3. SLV RIOTING OUTSIDE PALACE; SLV FIRES OUTSIDE PALACE WALLS; MV ARMED HAITIANS ON STREETS (8 SHOTS) 1.29 4. MV ARMED ASSAILANT DEAD IN PALACE; SLV GUNSHOT HOLES IN PALACE WINDOWS; SCU SHATTERED PICTURE OF JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE ON FLOOR (3 SHOTS) 1.44 5. SLV DAMAGE WITHIN PALACE; GUNSHOT HOLES IN PALACE CEILINGS (4 SHOTS) 2.16 6. MV PALACE SECURITY FORCE WALKING ON PALACE GROUNDS 2.22 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 3rd January 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI
  • Country: Haiti
  • Reuters ID: LVA2ZZLS4GB2488LZDYYM1KN32E0
  • Story Text: Gunmen stormed the National Palace in Haiti in an
    apparent coup attempt against President Jean-Bertrand
    Aristide, raising the spectre of the Caribbean nation's bloody
    past as dissatisfaction with his government grows.

    Security forces foiled the bid after a shootout with
    the attackers, officials said. Seven people, including a
    gunman and two police officers, were killed in the incident.

    Later, thousands of Haitians loyal to the populist
    Aristide, some armed with guns and machetes, took to the
    streets, burning tyres and crying for vengeance against the
    attackers.

    Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest who is Haiti's
    first democratically elected president, and his family were
    asleep at their private home a few miles (km) away at the time
    of the attack, palace sources said.

    The president went to the palace hours after the assault
    and, in a speech broadcast to the nation, asked Haitians to be
    vigilant in the face of the attempted coup.

    Haitian National Police spokesman Jean Dady Simeon said an
    estimated 30 armed gunmen stormed the palace before dawn on
    Monday (December 17). The attackers were dressed in military
    uniforms, Chief of Palace Security Oriel Jean Baptiste said.

    There was no official word on the affiliation of the
    gunmen, but suspicion fell on members of the disbanded army.

    A crowd torched the offices of the main opposition
    political coalition, the Democratic Convergence, and the
    headquarters of two of its parties, KONAKOM and ALLA,
    witnesses and radio reports said.

    Unrest flared in the southern cities of Jacmel and Petit
    Goave in protest against the coup bid, radio reports said.

    Local radio stations identified the gunmen as ex-soldiers.

    The army, which ruled Haiti in brutal fashion for several
    years in the 1980s and 1990s, was disbanded after a U.S.

    intervention in 1994 that restored Aristide to power following
    his ousting in an earlier coup.

    Monday's attack took place against a background of growing
    unrest in the impoverished country of eight million people,
    which has a history of political violence, but has been
    relatively stable under Aristide's rule.

    Aristide draws much of his support from Haiti's poor and
    is disliked by the elite. But anti-government sentiment has
    been rising lately: a dispute with the opposition has held up
    desperately needed international aid, and rumours had been
    circulating in the streets that a coup might be attempted.


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