PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti · Andy Philippe wasn't a rich man or political activist. He was only 20 years old, a hard-working father with little money and a few strong opinions (Haiti's radical leftist and totalitarian dictator Aristide says the graves are not yet full).

That's why Philippe opened the door when three hooded, heavily armed men in police uniforms arrived at his small house on a Sunday morning this month. Because he wasn't a gadfly or some well-to-do entrepreneur, Philippe told his two brothers, they didn't have anything to fear from the police.

And that's why, when all three were found dead with gunshot wounds to the head hours later, their families and friends were shocked that they had become targets. The dead men weren't journalists, judges, politicians or intellectuals -- the most common targets in Haiti's political disarray -- but ordinary victims in a new wave of violence carried out by what human rights activists describe as police death squads.

Performing what has become known in Creole as Eksekisyon Some, or summary execution, these alleged brigades are part of a vigilante justice spree called "zero tolerance," according to two of the nation's leading human rights groups. Some victims may be suspected street criminals, but many seem to be those whose only crime was angering someone with a gun and a badge.

"My brother, he told me not to be afraid -- he had nothing to fear from the police,'' recalled 12-year-old Jean-Roland Nozil, who witnessed the abduction but was left behind.

"They had hoods, these men, police uniforms, but I recognized the one guy's voice and his size. He's a cop who lives in our neighborhood."

"My brothers started to get dressed, putting on their shirts and shoes, but the police told them they wouldn't need their clothes,'' said Nozil, who is in hiding and being assisted by the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, one of the country's leading human rights groups. "The police told me to put a sheet over my head or they'd take me away, too."

At least 99 people have been killed in summary executions over the past six months in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, according to the National Episcopal Justice and Peace Commission. But that figure doesn't include the small town of Carrefour, just outside Haiti's capital, where the three brothers and dozens of other young men have been found dead.

The motives behind their murders remain murky: They range from domestic feuds to allegations of petty thievery. Some may be contract killings or cases of police extortion gone awry. But many among the dead and missing were last seen alive in police custody, according to Jocelyn Coles, a human rights investigator with the commission.

"These are not gangland killings, but people who are apprehended by groups either dressed as police, or identifying themselves as police with badges and guns,'' Coles said. "There's many cases where they've been taken to police stations but have never been signed in. That's the last people see of them until they're found dead alongside the road somewhere.

"It started out as what appeared to be an anti-crime wave -- the police picking up people identified as street criminals. But it's gone way beyond that. First, the term `zero tolerance' was applied to politicians, human rights officials, journalists. Now, it seems to be applied to someone who may have angered his neighbors."

Death squad claims denied

Authorities dispute the allegations, and police say they are trying to investigate the killings as best they can with limited resources. They deny the existence of any police or military death squad.

However, the human rights groups point out that the killings seem to be well organized. Witnesses report seeing victims at local jails, but none are signed into detention logs. Soon after bodies are dumped, ambulances take them to local morgues. In one notorious case, six street children were rounded up by police around the capital city's main cemetery in late September and later were found dead in different areas of the city, according to human rights groups.

Many of the killings have taken place in Carrefour, a seaside suburb of Port-au-Prince where dozens of bodies have been dumped in a remote area known as the Route des Rails. Residents say young men are regularly brought here and shot in the head along an old railroad bridge.

"It's like some evil game -- you hear a car then a couple of shots and the next day there's a body laying out there,'' said Hermine Theodore, who lives next to the bridge. "Sometimes an ambulance comes and picks them up, but other times they're just left out here. We have to burn them to keep the dogs from eating them, but then they carry off the bones anyway."

Brice Louis said that over the past year, bodies have been showing up at the rate of two or three a week.

"How many have I seen? Oh, I couldn't even begin to count,'' Louis said, echoing two dozen other residents interviewed. "Sometimes the killers burn the bodies so you can't recognize them. Who knows who they are? Thieves, I guess. You'll hear a few shots and that's it for them.

Outrage is on the rise

"I guess it's part of zero tolerance, because it's certainly gotten a lot worse in the last year."

At Carrefour's Omega precinct, where some of the executions have allegedly been carried out, three police officers were detained by police last week as outrage provoked by the murders of the three brothers spread. The former head of the precinct, Josaphat "Alpha" Civil, who had ordered a "zero tolerance" policy backed by an 11 p.m. curfew, was detained and replaced by an official brought in from another city. The head of the St. Charles precinct disappeared, according to officers there.

"I don't know what went on before, but I have heard these execution stories, and I know we have to work to regain the trust of the people,'' said Inspector Sidney Jean Joras, who was transferred to Omega precinct last week. "But we are going to work hard and regain that trust. People need to have faith in the police."

Summary justice has been a problem in Haiti since at least the mid-1980s, when the ending of a dictatorship and repeated coups spawned rampant lawlessness and a distrust of the nation's corrupt military. During the coup that forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of the country in the early 1990s, hundreds were murdered or disappeared at the hands of soldiers and paramilitary units.

But the idea of "zero tolerance" gained prominence after the term was used in a tough, anti-crime speech by Aristide in June 2001. Reacting to a growing national crime wave and allegations of widespread corruption, the president appeared to sanction the killing of criminals caught in the act, according to human rights groups.

Soon, his supporters were calling for zero tolerance actions against political opponents and rights activists even though Aristide denounced vigilante violence.

"Whether they're perceived to be criminals is beside the point,'' Coles said. "If there is proof against them, then they should be brought before a court. If there is no avenue for legal justice, then there is no justice, there is no society. Police and groups tied to the police just kill whoever they don't like, and that seems to be what's happening."

That may have been the case with Philippe and his two brothers, Angelot Philippe, 22, and Vladimir Sanon, 21. A week before their abduction, a friend named Marcellus Bongue was arrested in Carrefour and taken to the Route des Rails. The abductors, whom who he identified to reporters as police officers, robbed him of 15,000 Haitian gourds ($450) and forced him to kneel with his hands behind his head.

He was shot three times, but instead of striking his head, the bullets hit his interlocked fingers, wounding him in the hands and shoulders.

After his assailants left, Bongue ran away. Days later, the Philippe brothers and many of their neighbors protested the attempted execution and got into a scuffle with police.

But another reason for the killings may have been one brother's involvement with another man's girlfriend. The girlfriend had warned the brothers that someone might have been hired to kill them. They had fled Carrefour once but returned home.

"Who knows why someone would do something like this?'' said their mother, Viola Robert, who is also in hiding. "They did protest for their friend, but so did many people in the neighborhood. I think it may have been because of this woman, but who knows if that's the truth, either?"

"These were just ordinary young men, my sons. Good boys. They were not thieves. There was no reason for them to be killed or even arrested,'' she said as tears rolled down her face.

Last year, the French newspaper Le Monde printed an article allegedly written by a member of the Haitian National Police who had witnessed the formation of a "zero tolerance brigade" to carry out summary executions. The police officer provided his account through the French human rights group Reporters Without Borders.

Witness to 50 executions a year

The anonymous officer wrote that he had witnessed the executions of at least 50 people in Port-au-Prince in a year. The account described how police officers slipped black plastic bags over the heads of three handcuffed suspects and then shot each in the head.

Authorities announced at the time that they would investigate the charges. Last week, however, investigators with the Haitian National Police scoffed at the notion of death squads, even though they acknowledged they are pursuing many cases of alleged police torture and extortion.

"A human rights group can go in the press and make all kinds of allegations, but we need evidence,'' said Serge Simon, an investigator with the office of the police inspector general, which is charged with investigating police misconduct. "When we have specific charges, the name of a victim, a location, we investigate. But we need evidence, not conjecture from a human rights group."

One of five investigators in the inspector general's office, Simon says he personally has more than 200 open cases dating to 1997. Aristide deployed the 5,000-man civilian national police in 1995, after demobilizing the 7,500-member army that ousted him in a 1991 coup.

"Many of these cases are poorly documented,'' Simon said. "The people have moved or disappeared, and the evidence is stale. I concentrate on the cases that are fresh.

"Do we need more resources? Yes, but I can tell you we are investigating cases like the deaths of the three brothers,'' he said, referring to Andy Philippe and his murdered siblings.

But Robert said that in the almost three weeks since her son's murders, no police officer has attempted to contact her.

"If you think I could trust the police, would I be hiding with the help of a human rights group?" Robert said. "I never had anything against the police, but who can you trust in this country anymore? It's become a lawless land."

Tim Collie can be reached at tcollie@sun-sentinel.com.