22449: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-Affidavits portray Haiti as a chaotic drug haven (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Affidavits portray Haiti as a chaotic drug haven

By Ann W. O'Neill
Staff Writer
Posted June 20 2004

Days before President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced out of Haiti, a
notorious cocaine trafficker stood before a federal judge in Miami and said
Aristide, once his friend, had turned Haiti into "a narco-country."

"The man is a drug lord," Beaudouin "Jacques" Ketant told U.S. District
Judge Federico A. Moreno on Feb. 25. "He controlled the drug trade in
Haiti." His country in rebellion, Aristide left four days later aboard a
plane provided by the U.S. government.

In recent weeks, it has become clear that federal law enforcement officials
in South Florida are putting a lot of stock in what Ketant has to say. The
high-living cocaine trafficker has emerged as a central figure in an
investigation that has snagged five former Haitian officials and appears to
have Aristide in its sights.

Four of them have hearings scheduled this week and next in federal court in
Miami.

Observers of Haiti say a combination of forces conspired to increase the
cocaine supply and deepen corruption after Aristide was elected in 2000.
They include a decision to freeze millions in U.S. aid and a crackdown on
Colombian smuggling routes through Mexico and at the U.S. border.

Affidavits filed in the cases paint a picture of a politically chaotic,
chronically impoverished country thoroughly corrupted by drug money. The
narco-dollars are alleged to have reached into the upper echelons of
government, even into the presidential palace through Aristide's trusted
security chief.

According to the documents, some top Haitian officials took protection money
and hid stashes of cocaine in their own homes. They steered DEA agents away
from incoming loads, and tipped off traffickers when the DEA was on to their
plans. Such corruption was the result of declining conditions in the Western
Hemisphere's most impoverished nation, Haiti experts say. The question
before a Miami federal grand jury is whether Aristide turned a blind eye to
the graft or actively participated.

His lawyer, Ira Kurzban, has denied the former president had anything to do
with drug traffickers. Instead, he said, the allegations are politically
motivated. The U.S. is trying to discredit Aristide so that he will not be
able to reclaim power in Haiti, Kurzban charges. "This is all about the
political character assassination of Aristide," he said.

Aristide disputed the drug-corruption allegations in a recent interview with
CNN in South Africa, where he lives in exile. "They are wrong," he said.

Haiti has served as a Caribbean cocaine crossroads for two decades, with
scant notice. Rumors of Aristide's involvement have swirled for years. "Once
Aristide left, the case against him appeared to be developing rapidly,"
observed Tom Cash, who headed the DEA's offices in Miami and the Caribbean
from the late 1980s to 1994.

During his tenure, Cash said, he and some of his agents stationed in Haiti
watched as planes dropped bundles of cocaine offshore. No one in the United
States or Haiti seemed particularly concerned.

Through most of the 1990s, he said, other priorities prevailed, most notably
U.S. immigration policy. The U.S. was counting on Aristide's cooperation to
keep down the numbers of Haitian migrants.

Aristide, a populist priest, was viewed as Haiti's great hope when U.S.
Marines ushered him back to power in 1994 but never lived up to U.S.
expectations. By the waning days of the Clinton administration, his
relationship with the United States was so rocky that $500 million in U.S.
aid was frozen. U.S. officials cited legislative election irregularies
corruption as the reason.

Drug traffickers' money filled the void, experts say. Cash, for one, called
it "white powder foreign aid." In essence, Haiti's government and political
patronage system subsisted on a "cocaine tax" levied against traffickers,
said Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami professor who studies the drug
trade in Latin America and the Caribbean. Under such conditions, smuggling
exploded in Haiti.

By some estimates, as many as 80 tons passed through the country during the
Aristide years. At one time, about five percent of the cocaine that reaches
the United States passed through Haiti. Now, that figure is closer to 20
percent, Bagley said.

Meanwhile, during the 1990s, cocaine was turning up on Haitian barges in
Miami. "The interstate of drug trafficking is the Miami River," Cash said.

While Cash initially observed what began as "benign neglect" from his perch
atop Miami's DEA field office, Bagley saw cocaine trafficking and corruption
grow into a crisis during trips to Haiti with a committee studying the drug
problem. The committee eventually gave up in frustration, Bagley said.

"Haiti is lawless, it is broke, and its institutions are bankrupt in every
sense," Bagley said. "Aristide was being starved. There was no police force.
He couldn't do anything about it, so he tolerated drug trafficking."

Bagley is not convinced Aristide took drug money for himself. Rather, Bagley
said, it propped up Haiti's feeble economy and political patronage system.
"I have spoken to hundreds of people in Haiti," Bagley said. "No one told me
he was enriching himself."

U.S. investigators are trying to follow the money, according to former DEA
head Cash. Of particular interest: reports that looters discovered $350,000
in cash in a safe in Aristide's basement the day after he left. "I know
there's a sitting grand jury, and that grand jury is looking for money,"
Cash said.

The inquiry, which dates to at least three years ago, received its first
boost with the arrests last year of Ketant and another notorious drug
trafficker, Colombian Carlos "Papi" Ovalle. Ketant was indicted by a Miami
grand jury in 1997, and investigators now are looking into whether Aristide
protected him until Haitian National Police put him on a DEA plane last
year. Ketant is cooperating, trying to shave time off a 27-year sentence he
received in February.

The Haitian official who put Ketant in handcuffs and delivered him to the
DEA, national police commander Rudy Therassan, was indicted last month in
Miami for his alleged role in cocaine corruption. Therassan's lawyer,
Lawrence Besser, specifically identified Ketant in court as an informant
against his client.

Some of the Haitian officials now appear to be cooperating. They are
precisely the type of witnesses prosecutors would use to corroborate the
traffickers' stories as they work their way up to Aristide, Cash said.

"This is a very large group of very high-ranking people, for Haiti," he
said. "You're seeing the classic development of investigations -- seeking
witnesses, corroborating them, documenting various and sundry loads, how
they were brought in and how they were disposed of. Aristide has got to be
feeling the heat."

Bagley is not convinced prosecutors can build a case against Aristide with
admitted conspirators who are trying to save themselves. "Now they are madly
plea bargaining to get these people to rat on Aristide," Bagley said. "These
individuals are of doubtful character. They are involved in drug
trafficking, trying to get off the hook."

Aristide has not been linked in the public record to cocaine trafficking and
corruption. He did not seem to be living in luxury in Haiti -- in sharp
contrast to the flashy Ketant.

But Cash said mounting circumstantial evidence points to a simple truth:
Aristide "would have had to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to have seen
what was going on with those surrounding him," he said.

Ann W. O'Neill can be reached at awoneill@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4531.
     Email story











Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

_________________________________________________________________
FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar – get it now!
http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/