30778: potemaksonje (news) DEA Arrests Guy Philippe (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

potemaksonje@yahoo.com


 Report: DEA Arrests Haitian Ex-Rebel 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/16/AR2007071602035.html

 By STEVENSON JACOBS
The Associated Press
 Monday, July 16, 2007; 11:02 PM

 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- 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.



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