24463: Hermantin ( News)Haiti bars Miami lawyer with Aristide ties (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Tue, Mar. 08, 2005


DIPLOMACY
Haiti bars Miami lawyer with Aristide ties
A Miami lawyer planned to visit Aristide's supporters in jail but decided to
return to U.S. after being warned that he could be arrested.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@herald.com

Haitian authorities at the Port-au-Prince airport refused to let Miami
attorney Ira Kurzban enter the country Monday because of his close ties to
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Kurzban flew to Haiti with a contingent of Aristide supporters that included
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters D-Cal., to visit two top officials of Aristide's
government who are on a hunger strike in the national penitentiary.

When the plane landed in Port-au-Prince, Douglas Griffiths, the U.S. Embassy
charge d'affairs in Haiti, told him that Haitian authorities might arrest
him if he tried to enter the country, Kurzban said.

Kurzban, who is Aristide's longtime attorney and a relentless critic of the
current government, did not take the risk and flew back to Miami.

''The reason for me not entering the country is because there is an
illegitimate government that is anti-democratic and does not like that I
speak on behalf of democracy,'' he told The Herald.

Haitian officials could not be reached to explain on what basis Kurzban
would have been be arrested.

Accompanied by embassy security agents, Waters continued her brief tour,
visiting former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior Minister
Jocelerme Privert, who are protesting their incarceration with a hunger
strike launched 15 days ago.

Neptune, 58, is ''very thin,'' doesn't ''speak much above a whisper'' and
became fatigued to the point of having to lie down after their meeting,
Waters told reporters before returning to the United States, according to
wire reports.

U.N. envoy Juan Gabriel Valdes told the Associated Press he visited Neptune
twice last week and he appeared in relatively good health.

Neptune and Privert are among dozens of ex-officials jailed without charge
since Aristide fled Haiti last year during an uprising. Both deny
accusations of ordering the killings of Aristide opponents in the provincial
town of St. Marc during the rebellion.