19249: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Drug dealer accuses Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Thu, Feb. 26, 2004


TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY: U.S. officials say one of Jacques Ketant's five
ex-wives looted his mansion near Port-au-Prince. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE, 2003
| More photos...


Drug dealer accuses Aristide

Before being sentenced to 27 years in prison and fined $30 million, a
convicted drug trafficker tells the judge he had help: from his close
friend, the Haitian president.

BY LARRY LEBOWITZ

llebowitz@herald.com


MIAMI COURTS

One of Haiti's most flamboyant drug traffickers said Wednesday in a Miami
federal courtroom that he couldn't have thrived without paying millions in
bribes to his close friend, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

For 20 minutes, Beaudoin ''Jacques'' Ketant spewed a series of
unsubstantiated accusations against the embattled Haitian leader. When he
finished, U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno sentenced him to 27 years
in prison and hit him with $30 million in fines and forfeitures.

Ketant -- who was indicted in 1997 but continued to live openly in a posh
Port-au-Prince mansion until June -- admitted to moving more than 30 tons of
cocaine between Colombia and the United States over a 12-year period. He
said he had help.

Aristide ''is a drug lord. He controlled the drug trade in Haiti,'' said
Ketant, 42. ``He turned the country into a narco-country.''

Miami attorney Ira Kurzban, general counsel to the Haitian government and an
advisor to Aristide, said later that Ketant's accusations were garbage.

''This is just another piece of the effort to politically assassinate
President Aristide before the U.S.-directed military coup physically
eliminates him,'' Kurzban said.

''Any reasonable person looking at this confession of a drug dealer . . .
knows that it smells awful,'' Kurzban continued. ``Where is the proof? Where
are the pictures? Where are the tapes? Where is the evidence?''

Federal prosecutors declined to comment afterward, but the allegations
weren't anything they hadn't heard. Ketant has been offering information
about Aristide, other Haitian leaders and top Colombian cocaine suppliers
since he was suddenly expelled from his homeland eight months ago.

During his rambling courtroom colloquy, Ketant told the judge: ``It's a
one-man show, your honor. You either pay [Aristide] or you die. . . . He
betrayed me just like Judas betrayed Jesus.''

Moreno said that wasn't why Ketant was before him: ``You see, I'm not
sentencing President Aristide. He hasn't been charged.''

''Not yet, your honor,'' Ketant retorted. ``You will be seeing him pretty
soon.''

SEEMINGLY CLOSE

Ketant and Aristide appeared to have been close. One of Ketant's siblings
said outside the courtroom that his brother is the godfather to one of
Aristide's children.

But the relationship started souring last year. In February, Haitian police
gunned down one of Ketant's younger brothers.

Then a key turning point occurred in May. Ketant and his bodyguards roughed
up an official at The Union School in Port-au-Prince, where one of his sons
studied side by side with the children of U.S. Embassy personnel. Outraged
embassy officials complained directly to Aristide.

On June 17, Ketant says he was summoned to the presidential palace but was
''kidnapped'' by Aristide security officers and turned over to waiting Drug
Enforcement Administration agents. He was immediately put on a plane and
whisked to Miami.

MANY ASSETS

Ketant quickly agreed to plead guilty and promised to forfeit what
prosecutors called a ''Midas-like'' collection of wealth in the poorest
nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Ketant was supposed to hand over more than $15 million worth of mansions,
luxury cars, businesses, cash, bank accounts and rare art.

He hoped to receive a reduced sentence in return for information about
Aristide and others. But the deal quickly fell apart.

Most of the assets -- including 200 rare paintings and $5 million in cash --
disappeared from his $8 million gated mansion in the Vivi Michel hilltop
enclave outside Port-au-Prince. U.S. officials have acknowledged that one of
Ketant's five ex-wives, escorted by a Haitian police chief, looted the
mansion after his expulsion.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kastrenakes -- who prosecuted the case with
David Weinstein, Karen Moore and Madeleine Shirley -- said Ketant failed to
make any effort to convert other assets that allow his extended family to
live in luxury in the United States and Haiti.

Ketant earned millions as the primary contact in Haiti for the Medellín,
Cali and Northern Valley cartels, operating several airstrips where large
quantities of cocaine were dropped.

DEA officials say Ketant oversaw a large crew of smugglers and
''swallowers'' who took the drugs to Miami, Chicago and New York in
suitcases, boats and their stomachs.

He also controlled a vast network of military, police and customs officials
in Haiti and the United States who provided security tips and were well
compensated to turn their heads as drugs crossed their borders.

Ketant was last seen by DEA agents on the streets of New York in 1996, but
escaped on a flight after disguising himself as a woman. A year later, while
living in luxury in Haiti, he was indicted by a South Florida federal grand
jury.

SIX CONVICTIONS

Two codefendants -- a Colombian cocaine supplier and a Haitian immigration
official who turned a blind eye to drug shipments -- were among six people
convicted in 1998 in West Palm Beach. Moreno gave the pair life sentences.

Another codefendant, former Port-au-Prince Police Chief Joseph Michel
Francois, is a fugitive in Honduras, which has no extradition treaty with
the United States.

On Wednesday, Ketant's defense attorney, Ruben Oliva, begged Moreno to ask
the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to place his client in a South Florida facility
so he could be close to stateside family and friends.

The judge refused, but hinted that other U.S. officials might be willing to
make it happen: ``I think if what he says is true, there are a lot of people
who are going to want to talk to him.''

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