a1833: Foreign Officials Arrested in Miami (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: amedard@gte.net

April 30, 2002
Foreign Officials Arrested in Miami
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:43 a.m. ET

MIAMI (AP) -- Two former foreign military officers accused of mass slayings in
Honduras and Haiti were arrested on immigration violations in Florida and were
awaiting deportation.

Juan Evangelista Lopez Grijalba, 63, was arrested Monday at his Miami-Dade County
home after his temporary protected status as a refugee was revoked, Immigration and
Naturalization Service spokeswoman Patricia Mancha said.

Lopez Grijalba was a colonel in a CIA-trained battalion in Honduras blamed for the
abduction and killing of at least 184 guerrillas and political enemies in the 1980s,
Mancha said. Honduran authorities issued an arrest warrant for him in 1996.

Herbert Valmond, 52, a former lieutenant colonel in Haiti, was arrested Monday at his
Tampa home, Mancha said. Haitian officials issued a warrant for his arrest in 1998
for his alleged role in the massacre of 25 Haitian peasants four years earlier.

Valmond entered the United States with a six-month visa in 1996 but was later denied
protected status, Mancha said. He was able to stay in Florida because he married a
U.S. citizen.

An immigration judge ordered Valmond's removal on April 11 after an investigation
into his actions in Haiti, said Bill West, the agency's chief of special
investigations.

Lopez Grijalba came to the United States as a tourist in October 1998 and was later
granted temporary protected status. The INS revoked that status Thursday after
concluding a two-year investigation into his past in Honduras, West said.

Both men were being held Tuesday in the Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County
awaiting deportation hearings.

According to the INS, nearly 30 alleged persecutors from Angola, Haiti, Honduras and
Peru have been detained in Florida and deported since last year.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Immigrants-Detained.html?pagewanted=print&position=bottom