19902: radtimes: Players in Haiti Revolt Linked to Drug Traffic (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Players in Haiti Revolt Linked to Drug Traffic

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/327/haiti.shtml

3/5/04

The government of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide fell Sunday
morning after the US and France stood aside rather than defend a
democratically-elected president from an armed rebellion. While the US
government has criticized Aristide's drug enforcement record for years,
even suggesting sotto voce that drug corruption "reached the highest
levels" of the Haitian government, it is now becoming evident that the men
who rose against him are even dirtier than the US accused Aristide of being.

As the Haitian economy went into freefall amidst political gridlock between
Aristide and an intransigent elite opposition backed by funds from the
National Endowment for Democracy's International Republican Institute, the
country became an increasingly important transshipment center for cocaine
from South America destined for the US and Europe. With a weak, underpaid
police force (and no army), Haiti was both easy and corruptible, according
to US and foreign diplomatic sources cited this week by the Chicago Tribune
and the San Francisco Chronicle in separate reports.

"They were all on the payrolls," one unnamed senior US law enforcement
official told the Tribune, adding, "There's nothing else to be involved in
there if you want money."

US displeasure with Aristide's drug fighting efforts is also a matter of
public record. The US refused to certify Haiti as cooperating in the war on
drugs for the last two years. In recent years, the US has revoked travel
visas for at least six Aristide officials because of their suspected
involvement in the drug trade.

But with Aristide now cooling his heels in the Central African Republic,
the question of his or his government's culpability in the drug trade is of
less interest than the question of the narco-involvement of the men who
overthrew him as the US stood by. The armed rebels were led by two men, Guy
Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who are both accused of involvement in
the drug trade.

Philippe "became involved in narcotics smuggling in the 1990s while he was
a leading Haitian police official," the Tribune reported "experts and
diplomats" as saying. The Chronicle repeated the charge, citing internal
documents from a regional governmental organization adding that Philippe's
second-in-command, Gilbert Dragon was also involved in trafficking.

The other leader of the armed revolt, Chamblain was a member of the FRAPH,
a paramilitary death squad that murdered hundreds of Aristide supporters
after he was overthrown in a 1991 military coup. FRAPH was allegedly
bankrolled by former Haitian Police Chief Joseph Michel Francois, the
Tribune reported. Francois was indicted in 1997 on charges he headed a
smuggling ring responsible for delivering 33 tons of cocaine to the US
during the 1990s. He remains a fugitive.

Both Chamblain and Philippe denied the charges, the papers reported.

.