30763: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-US-Rebel Leader (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 16 (AP) -- U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
agents arrested a former rebel leader and presidential candidate with
alleged ties to drug traffickers, Haitian radio reported.
   U.S. and Haitian officials declined to comment on the Radio Metropole
report, which cited eyewitnesses who said officers swooped down Monday in
helicopters on the home of Guy Philippe, who helped toppled former
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
   Earlier, both Metropole and Radio Vision2000 reported that
foreign-looking agents searched Philippe's home in the southern coastal
town of Les Cayes but found only his wife.
   Metropole said later that the former rebel leader was captured in Les
Cayes by DEA officers, but the station cited no source and gave no details
on the status of the 39-year-old former police commander who ran for
president in 2006.
   Oscar Negron, a spokesman in the DEA's Miami office, declined to comment
when reached by phone late Monday. The DEA has in the past assisted in
arrests in the Caribbean nation in conjunction with local authorities.
   Haitian Foreign Minister Renald Clerisme said he did not know anything
about the incident. An employee who answered the phone at the U.S. Embassy
also declined to comment, and calls to the embassy spokesman were not
immediately returned.
   Philippe was the police chief of Haiti's second largest city,
Cap-Haitien, but fled the country in 2000 after being accused of plotting a
coup. He returned in 2004 to help rebels topple Aristide in a three-week
uprising.
   Aristide called Philippe and other rebels "terrorists," and accused them
of ties to drug traffickers who use Haiti and the neighboring Dominican
Republic to reach the U.S.
   Human Rights Watch says that while Philippe was police chief in the
Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas from 1997 to 1999, dozens of suspected gang
members were executed by police under the command of his deputy.