Pentagon Warns of Possible Haiti Assassinations

Concerned that violence in Haiti may escalate now that the U.S. military mission has turned over its peacekeeping role to the United Nations, the Pentagon has warned U.N. and Haitian security forces that more than 20 “potentially at-risk people” could be targeted for assassination, senior Defense Department sources said Thursday.

The list of possible victims, the majority of whom have been identified as political opponents of reinstated President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has been compiled by U.S. military and intelligence sources in the week since President Clinton’s March 31 visit to the island nation ended the six-month U.S. peacekeeping effort.

The highly classified list was cabled by the Pentagon to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince with the understanding that the information would be used immediately to alert U.N. and Haitian security forces.

“We’ve sent through State Department channels, based on intelligence sources, a list of people we feel could be targeted,” one senior Pentagon official said. “The people there are putting together more information, and it will be used appropriately.”

Another U.S. military official said the list was drawn from a wide variety of sources, including Haitian security information, intelligence data and even public contacts and media accounts gathered over the last several days in Haiti.

Triggering the U.S. concern was the assassination of Mireille Durocher, an outspoken opponent of the Aristide government, who was killed three days before Clinton visited the Haitian capital.

Durocher, 38, a U.S.-trained lawyer, was an outspoken opponent of Aristide.

She was closely linked to former Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, the Haitian army commander who led the September, 1991, coup that overthrew Aristide.

Her assassination was believed to be the work of professional killers.

She was machine-gunned to death with a companion as she sat in a car in a traffic jam in Port-au-Prince. It was the first attack on a major anti-Aristide figure since U.S. troops arrived in September to end Haiti’s brutal military regime.

“As we obtained this intelligence,” one senior Defense official said, “we passed it on through the appropriate channels to the embassy there. And this is highly sensitive material.”

But State Department officials attached less significance to the reports than did the Pentagon. One senior State Department official said he was aware of a possible hit list compiled from Haitian press accounts “but we didn’t give it much credence.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.