Mr Garrison has also accused Canada's ambassador to Haiti of having irregular links to the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. While ostensibly continuing to back the exiled President and his return, US officials began using phrases such as a 'weird, flaky guy' and Mr Clinton himself made a faux pas when, in an attempt to back Mr Aristide, he said: 'Look at the alternatives.' Nevertheless, Mr Garrison's one-man campaign may have tipped the balance in the US as Mr Clinton kept US marines on alert for a possible intervention. Contrary to reports circulated in the US, Mr Aristide never mentioned 'Pere Lebrun' in a speech before the 1991 coup, although he did refer to 'that wonderful smell' - which could have been an abstract reference to the practice. But Mr Aristide's collection was apparently what led to the allegations that he advocated what in South Africa is commonly known as 'necklacing'. In Haiti, the 'Pere Lebrun' paintings, like those of voodoo ceremonies that depict the biting off of chickens' heads and people in trances, are common. Pere Lebrun was the name of a former tyre manufacturer in Haiti, whose advertisements showed a smiling black face sticking his head through a tyre. Then there were the nave paintings found on Mr Aristide's walls, some showing people being tortured and killed by what is known here as 'Pere Lebrun'. Mr Aristide's doodlings of eight-headed monsters, a common voodoo symbol, led to many of Mr Garrison's later allegations. Mr Garrison kept the originals for his private collection at his Los Angeles home. He found Mr Aristide's diaries and handed copies over to a friend, Colonel Pat Collins, the then US military attache in Haiti who is now in Mogadishu. His first task? To go through Mr Aristide's private possessions at the palace, according to the rare interviews he has given.
He came, he insists, merely as a 'friend of Haiti', unpaid (although provided with a bodyguard), and has been here since, often sleeping at military headquarters as a security measure.
Mr Garrison was called to Haiti by the coup leaders 'to lend a hand' the day before they overthrew the populist President in 1991.
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