HAITIAN MIGRANTS
Haitians angry over sinking
Haitian migrants are 'angry and revolted' over the alleged ramming of their boat by police off Turks and Caicos.
BY STEVENSON JACOBS
Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Survivors of the worst disaster to hit Haitian migrants in years were ''angry and revolted'' as they accused a Turks and Caicos police vessel of ramming their crowded boat twice before it capsized, killing dozens in shark-infested waters, a senior official said Wednesday.

The shocking allegation against the British territory's police boat didn't come out until Tuesday because the 78 survivors of the disaster have been locked in a jail-like detention center and barred from speaking to journalists.

Officials say about 160 migrants were jammed onto a rickety sailboat that capsized before dawn last Friday, spilling most of them into the Atlantic Ocean a half-mile off one of the islands in the Turks and Caicos, 125 miles north of Haiti.

''They're very angry and revolted by what happened, because this is a problem that we still can't clarify up until now,'' Jeanne Bernard Pierre, director-general of Haiti's National Migration Office, told The Associated Press from the Turks and Caicos, where she met with the detained survivors.

The Turks and Caicos government will not comment on the allegations until two investigations into the incident are completed, said Ben Boddy, an official with the governor's office. Britain's Foreign Office also declined to comment pending the investigations.

GOVERNMENT PROBES

One probe is being conducted by the local government and three government experts from Britain are carrying out an independent investigation, said David Stewart, spokesman in London for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.

Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition in Miami, said his group would meet today to discuss the tragedy and might call for the United Nations to investigate.

''We are very concerned that deliberate criminal action may have taken place in the rescue of the Haitian refugee boat,'' he said.

Turks and Caicos Gov. Richard Tauwhare said Tuesday the sailboat capsized while it was being towed by a police boat in rough seas, contradicting earlier claims by local officials that police did not arrive on the scene until after the migrant boat capsized.

Pierre told AP she had seen no evidence of a cover-up, but added: ``It's too early to say that we're satisfied with the [progress of the] investigation.''

On Tuesday, she said the Haitian government would consider the ramming of a migrant boat to be a ''criminal'' act.

The known death toll rose to 61 late Tuesday after dozens more bodies were found floating in the ocean, some partially eaten by sharks.

More than a dozen migrants remained missing and presumed dead.

The decision to reportedly tow the overcrowded sloop in stormy seas without giving life jackets to the migrants has raised safety concerns, but lead British investigator Richard Mull said Turks and Caicos police were following procedure.

''The Haitian sloop was on the tow with the Turks and Caicos police boat at the time, as is standard operating procedure, when it capsized,'' Mull told reporters Tuesday.

SAILBOAT EXAMINED

Mull said his team interviewed survivors and local police and examined the migrants' sailboat, but he didn't say if the vessel had sustained any damage from a collision.

He said a preliminary report should be ready in a few weeks.

In Miami, an official with the Miami-Dade medical examiner's office who was sent to Turks and Caicos said most of the 20 bodies he had examined appeared to have drowned.

Erik Mont said only one of the 20 bodies he spent two days autopsying earlier this week had injuries that could suggest a shark attack.

The Miami-Dade office sent three examiners to Turks and Caicos to help with the autopsies. Mont said their work will be billed to the island's government.

Miami Herald staff writer Trenton Daniel and Associated Press writer Jessica Gresko, both in Miami, contributed to this report.

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