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| Posted Wednesday, February 21, 2007 |
| U.N. peacekeepers seize house of top Haitian gang leader,
arrest 17 |
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 21, 2007 - U.N. peacekeepers seized a house belonging to
one of Haiti's most wanted gang leaders but failed to catch him during a raid that also
led to the arrest of 17 suspected gang members, officials said Wednesday.
Blue-helmeted troops stormed the house of Amaral Duclona on Tuesday in the
Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil, but the targeted man slipped out before troops could
catch him, said Col. Alphonso Henrique Pedrosa, a Brazilian military spokesman. It was not
clear if those arrested belonged to Duclona's gang.
Duclona is suspected in a wave of kidnappings but has denied criminal ties. He is the
second gang leader this month to flee from the 8,800-strong U.N. force, which arrived in
2004 after a violent uprising toppled former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The raid was part of a new U.N. offensive to drive gangs out of the Caribbean nation's
slums. Earlier this month, U.N. troops stormed Cite Soleil and chased out another gang
leader known as Evens, who is also in hiding.
On Wednesday, U.N. troops gave journalists a tour of Duclona's vanilla-colored house, a
well-secured, two-bedroom property. The home included an entertainment center and tiled
patio with a fountain a sharp contrast to the rows of tin shacks and crumbling brick
hovels that populate the fetid seaside slum.
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