People’s hero was Haiti’s first democratically elected president
Mr Aristide, 50, whose role in a popular uprising that ended decades of dictatorship in the 1980s made him a hero of Haitian democracy, left the nation of eight million people 24 days after the start of a rebel uprising.
The United States, France and other nations have pressured him to quit and end the revolt, in which nearly 70 people have been killed.
Slight and studious-looking, Mr Aristide is a former Roman Catholic parish priest. He became a hero to legions of poor with sermons denouncing oppression and the dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and the military dictatorships that followed after Duvalier fled in 1986.
He gained an almost invincible aura when he survived several assassination attempts and became Haiti’s first democratically elected president in 1991 after years of brutal dictatorships.
But he was quickly pushed out of office in a military coup in 1991 and restored to office in 1994 by a US invasion.
A decade later, he again appealed for foreign help to back his authority but this week, as rebels advanced on the capital and a possible bloodbath loomed, the United States and France pressed him to quit.
Mr Aristide raised huge expectations in the early 1990s but his popularity faded as he failed to ease Haiti’s chronic poverty and critics said he resorted to thuggish tactics to keep power.
Many said Mr Aristide faced problems of his own making but his supporters felt he had been betrayed by weak support from abroad to help rebuild Haiti after his return from exile.
The latest revolt erupted in the city of Gonaives two weeks ago and was led by an armed gang that once supported him.
“If you’re dealing with thugs, you get thuggish behaviour,” said Robert Fatton, a politics professor at the University of Virginia, after the revolt began.
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