a185 Miami detainee back in hospital (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Published Sunday, December 30, 2001


Miami detainee back in hospital
Haitian police removed him
BY PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS
pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com


Miami businessman Antoine ``Tony'' Saati, detained by Haitian police for 
alleged involvement in a recent failed coup, was resting in a Port-au-Prince 
hospital on Saturday after being taken from his sick bed to another night in 
jail on Friday.

Gina Saati said her brother ``is a borderline diabetic.'' She said he 
managed to get a message out of Fort Dimanche Delmas 33 prison -- ``one of 
the worst places any American could be held,'' she said -- saying, ``Please 
bring medical help.''

Tony Saati, who has denied any connection with the violent coup attempt on 
Haiti's presidential palace Dec. 17, was arrested Dec. 20. Saati, CEO of the 
Miami-based export-import firm One World Corp., says he went to Haiti three 
weeks ago to serve legal papers on former employee and friend, Eddy Deeb.

Deeb, a member of a politically influential family with close ties to 
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was not available for comment. The Haitian 
National Police did not return phone calls asking for an update on the case.

The U.S. Embassy, which has sent consular officials to the jail to check on 
Saati, a U.S. citizen, did not respond to telephone calls Saturday. Saati 
told The Herald on Friday that he is more angry at American officials for 
not demanding his release than he is at the Haitian government.

In a suit filed in Miami circuit court, One World claimed Deeb, his brother 
Robert Deeb and their Robico Inc. firm forged documents to gain control over 
car tires and other goods owned by One World and destined for the Dominican 
Republic market.


LEGAL BATTLES

Gina Saati has claimed that the arrest of her brother was a move by the Deeb 
family to dissuade him from pursuing his case in a Haitian court. She said a 
Haitian judge, who the Haiti-born Tony Saati hoped would order his release, 
failed to keep an appointment on Friday for a hearing. Five lawyers retained 
by her family had not been able to find other judges willing to hear their 
appeals on behalf of Saati, Gina Saati said.

A nurse at the L'Hpital du Canapé Vert, said Saati had been returned to the 
hospital and ``is sleeping.''

He was hospitalized earlier in the week after supposedly accidentally 
drinking from a bottle of Pine Sol in his 8-foot-by-9-foot prison cell, 
which he said he was sharing with 14 other people, including two pregnant 
women.

Gina Saati said the five policemen who took her brother from the hospital to 
jail at 3 p.m. Friday did not show a court order and did not obtain a 
doctor's release.

``The hospital gave him a diuretic'' to help him expel the Pine Sol from his 
body, she said, ``but at the prison, they would not allow him to use the 
toilet.


`LOSING IT'

``He started getting very nervous'' at the jail, she said, after talking to 
people in Haiti she has hired to help her brother.

``He started losing it, telling everyone he was not well. A doctor came to 
the jail and gave him a tranquilizer, but his body started acting up because 
he was having a bad reaction to it. The police got scared, and so they took 
him back to the hospital.

``The stress is getting to him, more than anything else . . . My brother is 
not a political person. He is an intellectual


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