1981 to 1982 · Haitianspan
An exile lands on La Tortue and Namphy and Regala put him down
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On 9 January 1982 a party of exiles led by Bernard Sansaricq landed on La Tortue, the island off the north coast, having set out from Grand Turk ninety miles away. Sansaricq's family had been destroyed at Jeremie in 1964, when his two year old nephew Stephane was blinded with a cigarette by an army captain. The regime had lost the habit of answering this kind of thing. Several days passed before the Leopards and troops from the Casernes Dessalines were organised, and militiamen already on the ground opened fire on the soldiers, taking them for the invaders. Henri Namphy and Williams Regala ran the operation. Those who did not escape were killed, or captured and then killed. The interior minister told the radio that the landing had been crushed at once, which was contradicted by the airlifting of every surgical resident at the General Hospital to Port-de-Paix. Mother Teresa, visiting that season, was photographed with the president and his wife and said she had been given a lesson in humility.
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