| RANDALL ROBINSON: The president called me
on a cell phone that was slipped to him by someone - he has no
land line out to the world and no number at which he can be
reached. He is being held in a room with his wife and his
sister's husband, who happened to be at the house at the time
that the abduction occurred. The soldiers came in to the house
and ordered them to use no phones and to come immediately. They
were taken at gunpoint to the airport and put on a plane. His
own security detachment was taken as well and they were put in a
separate compartment of the plane. The president was kept with
his wife with the soldiers with the shades of the plane down and
when he asked where he was being taken, the soldiers told him
they were under orders not to tell him that. He was flown first
to Antigua, which he recognized, but then he was told to put the
shades down again. They were on the ground like this for two
hours before they took off again and landed six hours later at
another location again told to keep the shades down. At no time
before they left the house and on the plane were they allowed to
use a phone. Only when they landed the last time were they told
that they were in the central African republic. Then taken to a
room with a balcony. They do not know what the room is. Outside
they say they are surrounded by soldiers. So that they have no
freedom. The president asked me to tell the world that it is a
coup, that they have been kidnapped. That they have been
abducted. I have put in calls to members of congress asking that
they demand that the president be given an opportunity to speak,
that he be given a press conference opportunity and that people
be given an opportunity to reach him by phone so that they can
hear directly from him how he is being treated. But the
essential point is clear. He did not resign. He was taken by
force from his residence in the middle of the night, forced on
to a plane, and taken away without being told where he was
going. He was kidnapped. There's no question about it.
AMY GOODMAN: How does he actually know, Randall
Robinson, how does president Aristide know that he is in the
Central African Republic?
RANDALL ROBINSON: He was told that when he arrived.
That there was some official reception of officials of that
government at the airport when he arrived. But, you see, he
still had and continues to have surrounding him American
military.
AMY GOODMAN: You spoke with him and Mildred Aristide
up to 10 times a day in the last days before they were removed
from Haiti. How did president Aristide sound when you spoke with
him today?
RANDALL ROBINSON: They sounded tired and very
concerned that the departure has been mistold to the world. They
wanted to make certain that I did all that I could to disabuse
any misled public that he had not resigned, that he had been
abducted. That was very, very important to him and Mrs. Aristide
explained to me the strange response to my calls on Saturday
night. I had talked to her on Saturday morning and him on
Friday. But when I called the house on Saturday night, the phone
was answered by an unfamiliar voice who told me that the
president was busy, a response that was strange and then when I
asked for Mrs. Aristide, I was told that she was busy, too. As
she told me then, even that early on, before they were taken
away and before the soldiers came, they had been instructed they
were not allowed to talk to anyone. So, that is - she said that
was the reason she explained this today, a few minutes ago - why
she was not able to talk to me and he was not able to talk to me
when I called the house object Saturday evening.
AMY GOODMAN: Who did they say was the person that you
had actually spoken to?
RANDALL ROBINSON: No, but that it was not someone who
worked at the house because they know my voice when they hear it
and they respond to it because I call so many times. This was
something new, a new person, a new voice, with a new kind of
tone. That is when we began to be concerned that something was
amiss.
AMY GOODMAN: I will ask you the same question I asked
Congressmember Waters who also spoke with president Aristide.
The issue of whether president Aristide resigned. Did he say he
did or he didn't?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Emphatically not.
AMY GOODMAN He said he did not resign?
RANDALL ROBINSON: He did not resign. He did not
resign. He was kidnapped and all of the circumstances seem to
support his assertion. Had he resigned, we wouldn't need blacked
out windows and blocked communications and military taking him
away at gunpoint. Had he resigned, he would have been happy to
leave the country. He was not. He resisted. Emphatically not. He
did not resign. He was abducted by the United States, a
democratic, a democratically elected president, abducted by the
United States in the commission of an American induced coup.
This is a frightening thing to contemplate.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, Randall Robinson, you said you
spoke to president Aristide by a cell phone that was smuggled to
him?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Yes and I cannot call back because I
have no number and the only way they can call out is by cell
phone because they have not been provided with any land lines.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they say how long they will be
staying in this place that they are, the palace of the
Renaissance, they say they believe in the Central African
Republic?
RANDALL ROBINSON: I haven't been told anything. I told
her that last night I spoke to senator Dodd's foreign policy
person Janice O'Connell called me to say that she had learned
from the State Department that he was being taken to the Central
African Republic and she had also been told by the State
Department that they had refused, that the south Africans had
refused asylum. I told her that I didn't believe that that was
true because the South African foreign minister - [Noise] Hello?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Randall, Robinson, we hear you.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Because the South African foreign
minister had called me from India Mid-afternoon on Sunday and
she asked how I was doing and I thought I was going to be doing
much better, and I told her so. And I said because I'm sure that
president Aristide has arrived in South Africa. She said no, he
hasn't arrived here. We haven't heard anything from him. We
don't know where he is and then we became really alarmed. She
said there's been no request for asylum. So, you see, the State
Department is telling an interested public, including members of
the congress, that South Africa refused asylum. The State
Department knows better. They know that President Aristide was
not allowed to request asylum from South Africa or anybody else
because he was not allowed to make any phone calls before they
left Haiti, during the flight, and beyond.
AMY GOODMAN: Anything else you would like to add from
your conversation with president Aristide on this smuggled phone
that he got hold of after many hours incommunicado and now
saying he believes he is in the central African republic with
the first lady of Haiti, Mildred Aristide?
RANDALL ROBINSON: The phrase that he used several
times and asked of me to find a way to tell the Haitian people,
he said tell the world it's a coup, it's a coup, it's a coup.
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