16693: Benodin: Haiti: Public prosecutor working on drug case reports being threatened (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Robert Benodin <r.benodin@worldnet.att.net>

Haiti: Public prosecutor working on drug case reports being threatened
September 10, 2003
BBC Monitoring
Broadcast by Haitian Signal FM radio on 8 September
[Cerisier] Attorney Louis Amyot Francois, the public prosecutor at the Civil
Court of Port-de-Paix, says that he has been subjected to pressure and
persecution from government authorities.
The investigations he is carrying out to find the authors of crimes against
people in several communes of the West Department are allegedly the origin
of this pressure and persecution.
Francois says he was the victim of an armed attack in his own office by a
police inspector who demands the unconditional release of Anson Remy, a well
known boat owner in the city, who is being kept in custody for questions
about a drug-trafficking case in Jean-Rabel. The public prosecutor has
therefore asked for the support of the general management of the Haitian
National Police so that he can continue to work freely.
[Francois] [words indistinct] persecuted. We are persecuted because, as I
said a moment ago, a meeting was held at Le Recif in Saint-Louis du Nord.
Among the people who participated in the meeting is the departmental
delegate.
They wanted to assassinate Senator Beauplan and me. A police inspector whose
name is Jackson Louissaint, who went to the office of the public prosecutor
and pulled out his gun and pointed it at the revered figure of the public
prosecutor, is also persecuting me. He is claiming that he will shoot the
Jacmel public prosecutor.
This means that we are persecuted because we are doing noble work. We are
doing a job in which we are instituting legal proceedings for the action
that took place in Guillette, a Jean-Rabel locality, where drugs were
unloaded. More than four people have been killed and more than 12 people
have been injured.
[Cerisier] It should be recalled that many people whose names have been
cited in the drug issue in Jean-Rabel have already fled in order not to
answer the public prosecutor's summons.
BBC Monitoring