New York, Feb 12, (RHC).- Actor/activist Danny Glover has just returned from South Africa, where he met with the ousted former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Glover reports that Aristide wants to go back to his country five years after he was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup, but the Barack Obama administration hasn’t dropped the U.S. position of blocking Aristide’s return.

Danny Glover, who also serves as chair of the TransAfrica Forum, spoke on the popular radio and TV program "Democracy Now!" He said he travelled to South Africa with a delegation of trade unionists where they met with Aristide and his wife, Mildred.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide told Danny Glover that he is "mystified" by the U.S. government response to his desire to return to Haiti.

"Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman noted that Aristide has not returned to Haiti since he was ousted in February 2004, in what was called a modern-day kidnapping in the service of a coup d’état backed by the United States. Aristide was flown in a U.S. military jet with U.S. security to the Central African Republic.

The former Haitian president and priest explained that he had not resigned; that the United States and France broke constitutional order by using force to depose him and send him into forcible exile in Africa.

In an interview shortly after being overthrown, Aristide said: "When you have militaries coming from abroad, surrounding your house, taking control of the airport, surrounding the national palace, being in the streets, and taking you from your house to put you in a plane, where you have to spend twenty hours without knowing what they were going to go with you... it was using force to take an elected president out of his country."