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





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.''