Haiti's Rebel Leaders

Background information from Human Rights Watch

Louis Jodel Chamblain
Guy Philippe
Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias “Jean Tatoune”

The most disturbing figure in the rebel leadership is Louis Jodel Chamblain. He is reported to have led the insurgents’ attacks on Central Plateau towns, including the regional capital of Hinche.  
 
Chamblain was a sergeant in the Haitian army (FAd’H), and a member of the elite Corps des Leopards. He left the army in 1989 or 1990 and reappeared on the scene in 1993 as one of the founders of the Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress (Front révolutionnaire pour l’avancement et le progrès haïtien, FRAPH). Known as its number two leader, he had a reputation for violence and action (in contrast to the better known and more media-friendly Emmanuel “Toto” Constant). In the report of Haitian Truth and Justice Commission, there is a statement by Emmanuel Constant that explains that FRAPH’s central committee was composed of himself, Chamblain, Mireille Durocher-Bertin, a lawyer who was murdered in 1995, and Alphonse Lahens (a prominent Duvalierist).  
 
Chamblain was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for the 1993 murder of businessman and activist Antoine Izmery, as well as for involvement in the 1994 Raboteau massacre. He is also implicated in the assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary, who was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his body-guard and a driver on October 14, 1993. According to a 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights, “FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill [Justice Minister Guy] Malary.”  
 
Chamblain escaped to the Dominican Republic in 1994, after the U.S. military intervention in Haiti, and returned to the country in late 2003 or early 2004.  
 
The leader of the insurrectionary forces, Guy Philippe, age thirty-five, trained by the United States as an army officer in Ecuador. He was integrated into the new Haitian National Police in 1995 and his first command post was in Ouanaminthe, on the northern border with the Dominican Republic. Later, in about 1997 to 1999, he served as police chief for Delmas, a large urban district on the north side of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. During his tenure there, the UN/OAS International Civilian Mission learned that dozens of suspected gang members were summarily executed, mainly by police under the command of Inspector Berthony Bazile, Philippe’s deputy.  
 
On October 18, 2000, Haiti’s prime minister announced that Philippe and other officers were plotting a coup d’etat. Before they were arrested, however, the men escaped over the border to the Dominican Republic.  
 
When the Cannibal Army broke into Gonaives prison in August 2002, they released some 150 prisoners, including Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias “Jean Tatoune.” Tatoune was serving a sentence of life imprisonment for participating in the 1994 Raboteau massacre. He had led anti-Duvalier mobilizations in Gonaïves in 1985 and was honored for years as a key figure in the uprising that forced Duvalier out. But during the 1991-1994 military government he became a local FRAPH leader. Tatoune now belongs to the Artibonite Resistance Front.