Aristide Backer Dragged From Mass and Killed

A prominent supporter of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was dragged from a Mass--in front of human rights observers--and assassinated outside the church Saturday.

Another person was killed and one was stabbed and wounded in the attack.

A Roman Catholic priest said the assassins of businessman Antoine Izmery were plainclothes police. A pickup truck driven by a uniformed policeman and carrying 10 plainclothesmen circled the Sacre Coeur church minutes before the Mass.

Three hours later, two assailants fatally shot a retired army colonel at a gas station in suburban Petionville. It was not known if the killing of Antoine Jocelyn, a former army doctor, was related to the Izmery assassination.

The Mass was to commemorate a military-backed massacre five years ago in which gunmen shot and hacked to death 11 people and wounded 70 at another church during a Mass celebrated by Aristide, the target of that attack.

Saturday’s killing was the boldest challenge yet to a U.N.-brokered peace plan providing for Aristide’s return to power Oct. 30. The popular Catholic priest was ousted in a bloody coup in 1991, and some soldiers have vowed to kill him if he returns.

Izmery, who bankrolled Aristide’s successful 1990 election campaign, told the Associated Press minutes before his death that he had been warned of bloodshed by a police special agent if the Mass went on as scheduled.

“We are not afraid. We are going to go to the limit,” he said.

Half an hour into the morning service, a tall man with a walkie-talkie in his hand and a .45-caliber handgun stuffed into his back pants pocket strolled down the center aisle as the Rev. Antoine Adrien was giving a sermon. Adrien had just told the 30 people present, including clergy and human rights observers, “We are here to honor all those who had been massacred in Haiti.”

The gunman first grabbed AP photographer Daniel Morel, who like Izmery has a beard, and asked him if he was Izmery. He said no.

Nearly a dozen men then surrounded Izmery and hustled him outside, where he was shot in the head.

Another man, apparently a passerby, was found dead lying face down across the street. But Private Radio Tropic reported three deaths, saying the other two were members of Izmery’s pro-Aristide Committee to Spread the Truth.