30774: Blanchet (news) HAITI -- Drug Trafficking -- U.S. War on drugs in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Max Blanchet <maxblanchet@worldnet.att.net>

"U.S. War on drugs in Haiti"
- Miami Herald

U.S., Haiti team up on drug raid

A U.S. military-style operation launched from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to
capture a Haitian suspect
signaled a renewed U.S. campaign to root out drug trafficking in Haiti.

BY JAY WEAVER AND JACQUELINE CHARLES
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

Launched from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, a secret U.S.
mission to seize an alleged Haitian drug trafficker who helped topple
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a bust.

But the dramatic, military-like raid to capture Guy Philippe, conducted
with four Black Hawk helicopters and two jets, has already sparked panic
among drug traffickers, politicians and police officers being targeted in
a new crackdown on Haiti as a narcotics hub for Colombian cocaine.

Monday's predawn raid by helicopter-borne agents from the Drug
Enforcement Administration targeted Philippe's rural home.

Philippe -- a former top Haitian police official, a leader of the 2004
rebellion against Aristide, a presidential candidate in 2006, and who has
been under a sealed U.S. indictment for drug trafficking since late 2005
-- is now in hiding.

''While the recent crackdown didn't get Guy Philippe, the operation is a
positive sign the DEA and Haitian government are working together,'' said
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who visited Haiti in January to push
the government there to step up its counter-drug efforts.

About one-tenth of all the cocaine hitting U.S. streets now flows through
Hispaniola -- the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic -- or
double the rate of two years ago.

DISAPPOINTMENT

The raid's failure angered Haitian President Rene Preval, who had to work
hard to persuade his minister of justice to allow the U.S. agents to
capture Philippe and other drug suspects on Haitian territory, according
to well-informed U.S. and foreign officials who asked for anonymity
because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the case.

''The president was very upset,'' said a foreign official based in Haiti.
Added one Haitian law enforcement official: ``If they had planned this
operation fully with us, they would have had him.''

In Monday's raid, more than a dozen heavily armed DEA and Haitian
antidrug agents surrounded Philippe's yellow, two-story gated home in the
hills above Les Cayes, on Haiti's remote southern peninsula. Nearby
witnesses said two masked agents stood on the roof of the house and
descended on ropes. They said Philippe, 39, heard the helicopters and ran
to a nearby village, from where he watched the search for him.

The former rebel leader is wanted on a Nov. 22, 2005, indictment charging
him with conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and money
laundering while he was a police official, according to law enforcement
officials and others familiar with the case.

His group of handpicked police officers allegedly provided security for
Colombian cocaine shipments as they were transferred to traffickers in
Haiti for export to the United States, according to law enforcement
sources.

Philippe has always denied any wrongdoing. He is one of dozens of Haitian
police officers, politicians and traffickers targeted by U.S. authorities
in recent years. Many of them were convicted in federal court in Miami
and are serving lengthy prison sentences.

THREE ARRESTED

On Monday, in parallel raids, DEA agents and Haitian police arrested
three other suspects indicted in Miami:

· Laveaux Francois: Allegedly led an organization out of the city of
Gonaives that transported cocaine from Haiti to the United States between
2004 and 2006.

· Raynald St. Pierre: A former police official who allegedly coordinated
protection for the cocaine shipments passing through Haiti.

· Bernard Piquion: Taken from jail, he was arrested on May 31 by Haitian
police who found 420 kilos of cocaine and several weapons in his caravan
of vehicles.

One other suspect who was supposed to have been arrested Monday but
remains at large: Michel Frantz Jeanty. He had been arrested in Haiti in
2004, but allegedly paid a $40,000 bribe to be allowed to escape.

DEA officials and the U.S. attorney's office in Miami declined to
comment.

The DEA's military-style mission to capture Philippe also signaled
increased cooperation from President Preval, who only months ago was
accusing the United States of fueling the narcotics trade as a consumer
country.

''Preval has been more cooperative, and we've been more aggressive,''
said one U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the situation in
Haiti. ``We're doing things differently in Haiti.''

UNDER PRESSURE

Preval has been under withering pressure from the U.S. government. But he
also fears that traffickers have been infiltrating his government, and
perhaps even have been financing his political enemies.

''The narco-traffickers have money [and they can afford] to buy judges,
policemen, ministers, parliamentarians,'' Preval told a group of
Miami-Dade officials in Port-au-Prince earlier this month.

'We need to give other models to our youths because young people now say,
`Why should I go to school since money is with the people who are
trafficking drugs?' '' he said. ``They see that drug traffickers are all
over. We need to change that.''

Preval also is increasingly worried that traffickers are seeking to
destabilize his government with bribes and by running for political
office. For instance, Philippe, who ran for president in 2006, is among a
handful of possible candidates for parliamentary elections expected late
this year.

''There is a concern about the effort by those individuals to use the
electoral process to provide them with some protection,'' said Mark
Schneider, who tracks Haitian issues for the International Crisis Group,
a Washington, D.C.-based independent think tank.

In a report released Wednesday, the group called on the United States to
continue supporting antidrug efforts in Haiti by training and vetting
Haitian police antidrug agents and basing two helicopters in the
neighboring Dominican Republic.

Schneider said the renewed U.S. targeting of Haitian traffickers sends a
clear message:

``We are serious about this. We are going to take some action that is
going to reflect the priority Preval has enunciated -- you've been put on
notice.''