25704: Hermantin(news)Ex-law official in Haiti gets 15 years (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Thu, Jul. 14, 2005
Miami Herald

FEDERAL COURT
Ex-law official in Haiti gets 15 years
A former top Haitian law enforcement official convicted of drug trafficking 
charges received a lighter sentence in federal court Wednesday for cooperating 
with federal investigators.
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@herald.com

A former top Haitian National Police commander was sentenced to almost 15 years 
in prison Wednesday in a major federal narcotics probe that is still zeroing in 
on deposed President JeanBertrand Aristide more than a year after his 
government's fall.

Ex-National Police commander Rudy Therassan, convicted on cocaine and 
money-laundering conspiracy charges, had about five years shaved off his 
sentence because he is providing inside information to prosecutors on Haitian 
and Colombian traffickers who bribed him and others to move their drug 
shipments through the island.

Therassan, 40, also must forfeit $1.8 million in assets he purchased with 
tainted drug money, including two houses in Palm Beach County.

Former National Police director Jean Nesly Lucien, 44, was also sentenced 
Wednesday to almost five years on a money-laundering conspiracy charge and must 
forfeit $180,000. He is not cooperating with authorities.

The 3-year-old probe has snared at least 14 drug smugglers, including 
ex-Haitian law enforcement officers, a former Haitian senator, a fired American 
Airlines employee and Aristide's former chief of presidential palace security. 
He has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with investigators.

Therassan is expected to be a witness in the first case going to trial. It 
focuses on the prosecution of one of Haiti's biggest cocaine-smuggling 
suspects, Serge Edouard. It is set to begin Monday.

NO SMOKING GUN

Despite the far-reaching probe, no evidence has been presented so far in Miami 
federal court that implicates Aristide, who has lived in exile in South Africa 
since his ouster in February 2004. But a high-profile convicted Haitian 
trafficker called him a ''drug lord'' during his sentencing that same month in 
a Miami federal court.

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Drug Enforcement Administration are trying 
to confirm whether Aristide personally profited from the loads of cocaine that 
passed through his country. They are poring over bank accounts from Panama to 
South Florida to Canada to Europe.

Therassan was the ringleader among corrupt Haitian law enforcement officials 
accused of shaking down millions of dollars from Colombian traffickers to 
provide protection for their cocaine shipments, according to prosecutors Lynn 
Kirkpatrick and David Weinstein.

MORE TRIALS TO COME

The Haitian police officials helped the traffickers unload tons of cocaine from 
planes allowed to land on National Route 9, a major highway near the airport 
and capital. Two officials -- Evintz Brillant, ex-Haitian anti-drug chief, and 
Romaine Lestin, former Port-au-Prince airport police commander -- face trial in 
September.

Before his ouster, U.S. officials had long complained that Aristide was at 
least turning a blind eye to traffickers who used Haiti to move Colombian 
cocaine to U.S. streets.

Under U.S. pressure, the Aristide government expelled four prominent 
drugsmuggling suspects to the United States between June and October 2003.

Among them: Beaudoin ''Jacques'' Ketant, who had avoided deportation earlier 
because Haitian law enforcement and the judiciary were easily corrupted.

At his sentencing last year, he admitted to moving more than 30 tons of cocaine 
between Colombia and the United States over 12 years. He was sentenced to 27 
years in prison and hit with $30 million in fines and forfeitures.

`NARCO-COUNTRY'

In an outburst during his sentencing, Ketant said Aristide ''controlled the 
drug trade in Haiti'' and turned it into a ''narco-country.'' He has told 
investigators that he paid Aristide and the head of his palace security, Oriel 
Jean, up to $500,000 a month to let him land small planes loaded with cocaine 
on National Route 9.

Ketant also claimed to have made massive payoffs to Aristide's political party 
and to one of his social-work foundations.

Miami attorney Ira Kurzban, former general counsel to the Haitian government 
and an advisor to Aristide, has characterized Ketant's accusations as 
``political assassinations.''