23080: (Chamberlain) Haitian Drugs (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   MIAMI, Aug 29 (AP) -- The former director of Haiti's national police has
been added to an indictment charging former high-level police officials
with plotting to smuggle drugs by guaranteeing official protection for
Colombian cocaine shipments to the United States.
   Jean Nesly Lucien was charged Friday with two drug conspiracy counts
dating back to 2001. An earlier version of the indictment named only former
Haitian police commander Rudy Therassan and former Haitian anti-drug chief
Evintz Brillant.
   All three were jailed without bond in Miami after the departure of
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February. The Drug Enforcement
Administration arrested Lucien in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood in May.
   An informant told DEA agents that Lucien and Brillant seized $450,000 in
drug profits from a Colombian trafficker in 2002, returned $300,000, split
the rest with other corrupt officers and made a deal to split the take on
future movements through the airport in the Haitian capital of
Port-au-Prince.
   A message left Sunday at the office of Lucien's attorney was not
returned. Defense attorney Stephen Golembe previously dismissed reports by
informants as sketchy and unreliable.
   The indictment is part of a wider investigation into drugs moving on one
of the most direct and porous paths between the world's largest cocaine
supplier and its largest market.
   The case is built on the word of convicted drug smugglers hoping to
shave years off their prison terms as well as finger-pointing officials
targeted in the crackdown.