Fallen peacekeepers honored in Haiti

By Omar Obeidat

AMMAN –– The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) on Tuesday held a ceremony to honor the memory of five Jordanian and six Uruguayan officers who lost their lives on Friday in a plane crash in the southeast of the Caribbean country, according to a UN official.

The bodies of Colonel Obeidallah Mawajdeh, Lieutenant Colonel Jihad Mheirat, First Lieutenant Bilal Abu Hjeileh, First Warrant Officer Amer Rawashdeh and Major Mohammad Shorman, who were participating in the UN peacekeeping mission, were recovered at the site of the crash Saturday.

Their remains were due for repatriation immediately following the memorial ceremony, which was held in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince at 7:30am local time (3:30pm Amman time), Douglas Coffman from the UN Department of Public Information, told The Jordan Times via e-mail yesterday.

“On behalf of the entire United Nations system, I extend my deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the peacekeepers whose lives we honor and whose service we will forever cherish,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement.

In the statement read by Ban’s special representative and chief of MINUSTAH, Hedi Annabi, the UN chief said: “Words provide little comfort, but their deeds speak eloquently. I have seen with my own eyes the remarkable progress that Haiti has made thanks to the efforts of our peacekeepers.”

“They were the proud sons of Jordan and Uruguay. But we can also claim them as our own,” the statement said, while thanking Jordan and Uruguay for their commitment to the enduring values and mission of the UN.

Ban ordered that the UN flag be flown at half-mast at the UN headquarters in New York to honor the fallen peacekeepers as well as World Food Programme staff recently killed in Pakistan, Coffman told The Jordan Times over the phone.

During the ceremony that took place at the headquarters of the Brazilian battalion - MINUSTAH’s largest military base - Haitian President Rene Preval bestowed the National Order of Honor and Merit on the fallen Jordanian and Uruguayan military personnel, according to David Wimhurst, MINUSTAH’s chief of public information.

Hundreds of UN staff, as well as Haitian and international dignitaries, attended the early morning ceremony at the battalion’s base in Tabarre. The 11 coffins were each decorated with a wreath of flowers laid by Annabi and the commanding officers of the Jordanian and Uruguayan battalions.

Meanwhile, the crash site has been secured and will remain secured until all necessary pieces of information from the investigation are collected, the UN official said.

Coffman said according to international norms, the investigators of the country owning the plane (Uruguay), the country where the plane was made (Spain) and the country where the accident took place (Haiti) will examine the wreckage to determine the cause of the tragedy.

Experts from the Untied Nations will also participate in the investigation which could take several weeks, he added.