Call for the immediate release or charging of all political prisoners, especially the two on hunger strikes, Prime Minister, Yvon Neptune and Interior Minister Jocerlyme Privert. Ask for the immediate release or bringing to trial of 70-year old grandmother, So Ann, who has been held illegally since May 10, 2004. All prisoners should be charged or released.

Help save Yvon Neptune's life - Yvon Neptune's Letter From Jail - 1/24/05 (See below)

Please make as many calls as you are able. Help save a life. Privert has been in prison since April 5, 2004, that's 11 months without ever seeing a judge or being charged. Neptune has been in prison for 9 months, also without ever seeing a judge or duly charged in a court of law.

Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was, on March 11, 2005, taken by MINUSTHA troops to a UN-base facility for emergency medical treatment. He is very ill. His life is in danger. Call the UN in Haiti as well as Congress to insure if he survives he is released from prison and allowed to live freely in Haiti.

More background info below, including:

- Four U.S. senators call for Haiti's jailed former premier to either be charged or released -March 9, 2005

- Haitian Lawyers Leadership Urgent Action Alert, March 2, 2005

- Yvon Neptunes Letter from Jail to the International Community, Feb. 24, 2005.

- Haiti's Prime Minister Yvon Neptune rushed to hospital in critical
condition - http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HAC/3_11_5.html - March 11, 2005

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Please call, e-mail and fax letters the officials listed below.

UN MISSION IN HAITI - 509-244-9377
FAX: KOFI ANNAN - 212-963-4879
KERRY - 617-565-8519 (MA)
KERRY - 202-224-4543 9DC)
KENNEDY -617-565-3107 (MA)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------U.S. Ambassador to Haiti: James B. Foley

Fax to: U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince - 011-509-223-9038 or 011-509-223-1641
State Department Haiti Desk, Washington - 202 -647-2901

Call: U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince - 011-509-223-4711
Anthony Beaver/John Mariz, State Department Haiti Desk - 202- 647-5088

Email: noriegarf@state.gov (Roger Noriega Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; BanksD@state.gov (Dana Banks, Human Rights Officer, U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince)

UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)
PHONE: 011.509.244.9650.9660
FAX: 011.509.244.9366/67
Or, Office of General Secretary (New York) - 212.963.4879

** Kofi Annan's Special UN Envoy to Haiti: Mr. Juan Gabriel Valdes
** UN Military Commander in Haiti: Lt. General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira
** UN Human Rights Office in Haiti: Mahamane Cisse-Guoro

Please Fax the MINUSTAH office Attention to the 3 listed above. Better yet, send 3 separate letters addressing them individually.

SEND COPIES TO AS MANY OF THESE PEOPLE AS YOU CAN

Fax No. (212) 963-4879
Hon. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General
United Nations
United Nations Headquarters
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017

With Copies to: kongo-doudou@un.org (Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, Chief of Communications, United Nations Support Mission To Haiti)

See Amnesty International urgent action release for Haitian police contact information. Letters may be fashioned from our other urgent acation alerts or from the "Release political prisoners" urgent action alert page

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Four U.S. senators call for Haiti's jailed former premier to either be charged or released -March 9, 2005
By STEVENSON JACOBS
Associated Press Writer
March 9, 2005, 9:21 PM EST

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Four U.S. senators urged Haiti's interim government Wednesday to either charge or release a former prime minister who has been on a hunger strike for almost three weeks to protest his incarceration.

The senators, all Democrats, also expressed concern about the health of former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, who is among dozens of former officials jailed without charge since ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti amid a rebel uprising last year.

Neptune denies accusations of orchestrating killings of Aristide opponents in the western town of St. Marc during the rebellion.

"If no charges have been brought against Mr. Neptune, we demand that he be immediately released," said Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd in a letter to interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue. "No prisoner should be submitted to prolonged detention unless they are formally charged ... and prompt steps are taken to set a date for their trial."

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Vermont Senators James Jeffords and Patrick Leahy also signed the letter, a copy of which was released by Dodd's office.

The senators also called reports that Neptune was in poor health "troubling." They urged the government to hold his trial in the capital of Port-au-Prince instead of St. Marc so U.N. peacekeepers can guarantee his safety.

Latortue's office did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Interim Justice Minister Bernard Gousse has ruled out requesting a change of venue without evidence that Neptune's life is in danger.

The letter came two days after U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, visited Neptune and called him and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert "political prisoners."

The interim government also accuses Privert of orchestrating the St. Marc killings. He denies the accusations and also has not been charged.

Privert and Neptune have both refused meals since a Feb. 19 attack on the National Penitentiary that freed almost 500 inmates. The interim government has said Privert and Neptune did not try to escape. Guards turned them over to U.N. custody during the attack, but both men asked to be returned to prison.

Waters said Neptune was thin and warned he could die from the fast. U.N. envoy Juan Gabriel Valdes, however, visited Neptune twice last week and reported that he appeared weak but not seriously ill, a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Separately, the U.N. peacekeeping mission denied the interim government's claims that its soldiers prevented police from monitoring a pro-Aristide protest on Friday.
Gousse has accused U.N. troops of violating their mandate by blocking police from monitoring the march.

Valdes rejected the claim, telling reporters Tuesday night that a "coordination misunderstanding" between police and the 7,400-member U.N. force was to blame for the police's absence. He did not elaborate.

The protest came four days after witnesses accused police of opening fire on marchers marking the one-year anniversary of Aristide's ouster. Two men lay dead after the shootings, but police insisted they only fired tear gas.

Subscribe to Newsday home delivery
Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press
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HLLN's Urgent ACTION ALERT - March 2, 2005
(Yvon Neptune's Letter from jail is below.)
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY

Demand The Immediate release of all political prisoners in Haiti, especially the release of Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and other Lavalas officials and supporters who have been incarcerated without charge for months on end. Especially in light of the Dec. 1, 2004 prison massacre where guards killed at least 107 unarmed detainees at the National Penitentiary.

*
BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Prime Minister Yvon Neptune has been on a hunger strike since the February 19, 2005 prison release that was, as reported by Anel Belizaire, intended as a cover to mask his assassination in the chaos. The eight months of incarceration, many attempts on his life and the deprivations of prison shackles in Haiti, along with this hunger strike has taken its toll on the health of Yvon Neptune. This morning doctors had to be called to his cell. He is in critical condition and his family worries he won't live much longer.

Today (March 2, 2005) HLLN went to Washington and made an urgent appeal to the Haiti Task Force of the Congressional Black Caucus to do something to help save the life of Yvon Neptune. We brought them Yvon Neptune's letter and delivered it into the U.S. Congressional record at a briefing on the situation in Haiti.

Below is the Prime Minister's perhaps last words, written from prison, after more than 8-months of being held without formal charges or trial.

It's difficult to stand idle as an innocent and noble man's life ebbs slowly but surely away as a result of the Bush Administration intentionally plunging into the backs of the Haitian majority this horrific cancer of lawlessness, repression, violence and inhumanity. The neocon imperialist shot Latortue's sick regime into Haiti's bloodstream by overwhelming and unmerciless force. But they say it is for our "own good" and in the best interests of Haitian justice and democracy!!! Such malevolence and insult to our intelligence is without peer.

This Coup d'etat cannot metastasize further.

One year of pure barbarity, terror and crime is absolutely much more than enough. Far, far too many innocent Haitians, human beings, have died senselessly, pointlessly and apathetically.

We urge everyone to demand that the United States take away its dirty syringe and send it on back to Boca Raton. Or better yet, some prison, we suggest Guantanamo Bay, for crimes against humanity. A place where even U.S. citizen, nor anyone else for that matter, will have to absorb such terror, ugliness. Certainly Haiti's starving and already traumatized boys and girs bear this U.S.-imposed burden much longer. It's beleaguered-in-tribulations adults neither.

Help save Yvon Neptune's life. Please contact the people and organizations Prime Minister Neptune has addressed his letter to below. Ask them to save Neptune's life by demanding his immediate and unconditional release from prison in Haiti. The U.S.-backed Latortue/Apaid/Gousse/Foley regime in Haiti, have revealed themselves, in the year since the Coup d'etat, to be competent only in violence, subterfuge, lies, shooting-dead young unarmed Black boys, unarmed demonstrators and at arming and rewarding their thugs, killers, convicts and mercenaries who keep them in power through the use of naked force.

Cite the Miami Law Center report and the recent February 28, 2005 shooting of unarmed demonstrators as an example of the anarchic conditions, lawlessness and ranpant human rights abuses.

According to Bel Air residence we interviewed, the February 28, 2005 shooting, was done by CIMO and SWAT Units, and their civilian attaches (especially the four A.S.-DDO operatives, known to Haitian victims as: Jean Yves “Nasson” Gerald; Narage “Eleus” Laguerre; St. Gor “Père Reklè” Clermond; and, “Gwo Fanfan.” ). These four men were among the six men, in the white, unmarked pickup Chevrolet truck, that stopped at the corner of Rue Des Cèsars and Rue Des Front-Forts and began shooting indiscriminately at the unarmed Bel Air demonstrators on February 28, 2005 in plain sight of the international media and U.N. troops.

According to their victims, the people of Bel Air recognized these four Direction Departementale De L’Ouest ("DDO") attaches as part of the shooters who fired into the crowd on February 28, killing at least 5 people and wounding over 15 because these four civilian attaches to the Haitian police, these alleged four murderers, are routinely sent on killing and arson sprees into their neighborhoods with total impunity and in plain sight of MINUSTHA troops. On February 28, 2004 at the peaceful demonstration even though the international media was present, along with human rights advocates, these four still were able to kill with impunity.

Bel Aire residents say the four work for the police station in Port-au-Prince that is under the command of Leon Charles, Director General of Haiti's police force and which main police station is under the jurisdiction of Coup D’etat government employee, Renand Etienne, the head of DDO. These civilian attaches to the DDO wear no uniform and are simply identified as A.S.-D.D.O. – that is Attaché Special to the DDO.

These are the freedom fighters of Mr. Bush and Latorture. These terrorists are the ugly epidemic unleashed on the people of Haiti. Please, your efforts to save the lives of the people of Bel Air, of Prime Minister Yvon Neptune are critical. MINUSTHA has no facility to hold these murderers. When they are caught by MINUSTHA killing the Haitian people, all U.N. troops can do is turned them over to the very people who hired them. And, in just hours, as the people of Bel Air, recount, these men are out and doubly committed to the madness of killing, killing, which they are well paid to do.

Bush took away Haiti's fledging democracy and replaced it with this Latorture death and killing regime. The people of Haiti cannot go to MINUSTHA for help as outlined above and cannot go to Latortue for justice. The only thing we can do is stop this from its source - The United States. Our government unleashed this Coup d'etat and must now stop the bloodshed - let this begin with the saving of Yvon Neptune's life. (Some contact info provided below. Thank you.)

Lit la red pou Ayisyen. Ann sonje, men anpil chaj pa lou!

Marguerite Laurent, Esq.
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
March 2, 2005
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Letter From Prime Minister Yvon Neptune (English Translation)

Febuary 24, 2005

To Ambassadors
Juan Gabriel Valdes, Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN

Denneth Modest, Special Representative of the Secretary General of the OAS

James B. Foley, United States of America

Claude Boucher, Canada

Thierry Burkard, France

Marcel Young, Chile

Ever since my unjust and unjustified incarceration at the National Penitentiary on June 27th 2004, my life has been directly threatened on three (3) occasions.

On the third occasion, Saturday February 19th of the current year, the Government made the decision to place me in isolation, purportedly for my own safety but the end result of this maneuver has been the application of further and apparently intended punishment. Indicative of this is the fact that after I returned to my initial cell after three (3) days in isolation, I am confronting new restrictions whose sole purpose are to humiliate me and above all to render me to the condition of an animal.

Dear Ambassadors, surely you are all aware of the Machiavellian reasons for which since the 29th of February of 2004 I have been the brunt of all sorts of persecutions to force me into exile. Much better than me, you are also aware of the politically motivated vile and cynical objectives of my arbitrary arrest and illegal detention, a detention which has now lasted 8 months and in dehumanizing and insecure conditions.

Despite irrefutable evidence which you all know some hoodlums in St. Marc in collusion with the NCHR and the Government persist in associating my name with their lies. This is of course being done to achieve shameful, monstrous, and macabre political ends which would at the same time mask their own acts of vandalism and assassination.

The Government, cloaked with a spirit of vengeance and with utter disregard for the most elementary principles and practices of law and justice, proceeds with sheer arrogance, not simply to arrest me without a warrant but furthermore to mount a biased and dictatorial Highest Court of Appeals since the constitutional mandate of many of the judges of this Court have long ago expired. They are conspiring to reenact the role of Pontius Pilate in the shamefully illegal case of incarceration and prolonged detention.

It seems that the Government is so infatuated with its power of "conqueror" that it is drooling over the bountiful returns on its investments in the democide and the destruction of the liberating forces of truth which bring forth justice.

With hopes that strong and sincere voices of moral authority and the partisans of justice will say unequivocally to the Government that it must cease to ally itself with delinquents, vandals, notorious assassins, and discredited organizations which shamelessly persist in trying to make me out to be a murderer so they can justify for the benefit of the Government my eventual lynching.

I am sure that the spectacle of my slow and certain death would be much more palatable to the Government and its cohorts.

To facilitate their purpose I have undertaken a hunger strike so that one day my brothers and sisters who are made to wallow in abject misery will no longer be disdained, starved, scorned and ostracized.

Yvon Neptune,
Political Prisoner
February 24th, 2005
Central Prison, Port-au-Prince

CC Congress of the United States of America
Caricom
African Union
Amnesty International
International Human Rights Organizations
United Nations (UN)
Organization of American States (OAS)
The Press
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Contact information:

African Union Headquaters
P.O. Box 3243
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: (251) 1 51 77 00
Fax (251) 1 51 78 44
website: www.africa-union.org
email for President Alpha Oumar Konare: KonareAO@africa-union.org

CARICOM:

Call, e-mail, fax and write CARICOM: 011-592-226-9280, webmaster@caricom.org

Call, e-mail, fax and/or write Huntley Medley, Public Relations Consultant, Office of the Secretary-General, Tel: (592) -226-9280-9 or 227-4671 , Email: hmedley@caricom.org.

cc: OAS Leinaudi@oas.org, HunterJ14@aol.com, gunter.burghardt@cec.eu.int, AntBar@oas.org, Argentina@oas.org, Bahamas@oas.org, Barbados@oas.org, Belize@oas.org, Bolivia@oas.org, Brazil@oas.org, Canada@oas.org, Chile@oas.org, Colombia@oas.org, Costa-Rica@oas.org, Dominica@oas.org, Ecuador@oas.org, ElSalvador@oas.org, Grenada@oas.org, Guatemala@oas.org, Guyana@oas.org, Haiti@oas.org, Honduras@oas.org, Jamaica@oas.org, Mexico@oas.org, Nicaragua@oas.org, Panama@oas.org, Paraguay@oas.org, Peru@oas.org, Republica-Dominicana@oas.org, StKitt&Nevis@oas.org, StLucia@oas.org, StVnG@oas.org, Suriname@oas.org, TnT@oas.org, Uruguay@oas.org, USA@oas.org, Venezuela@oas.org, vze4ksd@verizon.net

cc: African Union:
Chairman of the African Union (AU), President Alpha Oumar Konare: KonareAO@africa-union.

cc: U.N.
Fax No. (212) 963-4879
Hon. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General
United Nations
United Nations Headquarters
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017
212-963-5012
inquiries@un.org

Haiti's regime:
M. Bernard Gousse
Minister of Justice and Public Safety
9 Ave. Charles Sumner
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
c/o Embassy of the Republic of Haiti - Washington, DC
Fax 202 745-7215

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti: James B. Foley
Fax to: U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince - 011-509-223-9038 or 011-509-223-1641

State Department Haiti Desk, Washington - 202 -647-2901
Call: U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince - 011-509-223-4711

Anthony Beaver/John Mariz, State Department Haiti Desk - 202- 647-5088

Email: noriegarf@state.gov (Roger Noriega Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs;

BanksD@state.gov (Dana Banks, Human Rights Officer, U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince)

UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)
PHONE: 011.509.244.9650.9660
FAX: 011.509.244.9366/67

Or, Office of General Secretary (New York) - 212.963.4879
** Kofi Annan's Special UN Envoy to Haiti: Mr. Juan Gabriel Valdes
** UN Military Commander in Haiti: Lt. General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira
** UN Human Rights Office in Haiti: Mahamane Cisse-Guoro

Please Fax the MINUSTAH office Attention to the 3 listed above. Better yet, send 3 separate letters addressing them individually.

SEND COPIES TO AS MANY OF THESE PEOPLE AS YOU CAN including your congressperson, local and national media (See contact for local & National media at: http://www.margueritelaurent.com/contactinformation/local-national-media.html ; U.S. congress at: http://www.margueritelaurent.com/contactinformation/uscongress.html )
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Haiti's Prime Minister Yvon Neptune rushed to hospital in critical
condition

http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HAC/3_11_5.html

Yvon Neptune, Haiti's prime minister under President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, on a hunger strike since Feb. 20, has fallen into critical
condition and was rushed to a hospital by U.N. soldiers Thursday evening,
according to sources in Port-au-Prince. Neptune and Interior Minister
Jocelerme Privert have been refusing food to protest their illegal
detention as well as the imprisonment of hundreds of Aristide supporters who
have not been charged with any crime.

Prime Minister Neptune was taken to the MINUSTAH hospital - run by the
UN Argentinian soldiers - across the highway from the main airport. He
was not forced to leave against his will, but was occasionally
unconscious.

"It has been a crime for people to express their solidarity with
President Aristide in Haiti since the coup d'Ètat against President Aristide
Feb. 29," said Pierre Labossiere, a founding member of the Haiti Action
Committee. "It's a crime punishable by summary execution in thousands
of cases. Those who aren't killed are put in jail just for expressing
their support for Lavalas [Aristide's party], even wearing Aristide
t-shirts in peaceful demonstrations. This is the situation that has kept
Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Minister of the Interior Jocelerme Privert,
folk singer Annette Auguste (So Anne) jailed in miserable conditions.

"The prime minister and other political prisoners were facing the
prospect of being killed in jail - several unsuccessful attempts against the
prime minister's life had been reported. It was these intolerable
conditions that brought the Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and the Minister of
the Interior Jocelerme Privert to start a hunger strike. The Gérard
Latortue government, in partnership with the U.N. and the governments of
Canada, France and the United States, bear the ultimate responsibility
for the human tragedy that has befallen Haiti since the kidnapping of
the popular, democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide."

Visited in his jail cell on Monday by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los
Angeles, Neptune refused to quit the hunger strike, telling the congresswoman
he would not break his fast until the unjust circumstances of his
arrest were addressed.

In a press release after the visit, the congresswoman reported: "The
conditions that I observed in the prison where Prime Minister Neptune is
being held were deplorable. Prime Minister Neptune was weak and could
only speak in a whispering voice. He insisted that he had been jailed
without justification and that he had committed no crime. He has not been
allowed to go before a judge to challenge his confinement as required
under the constitution of Haiti, and he believes he has been targeted to
be killed."

She continued: "I urge the interim government of Haiti to set Prime
Minister Neptune free and release all political prisoners in Haitian
prisons. The interim government's repression of dissenters like Prime
Minister Neptune must end immediately. The whole world is watching."