30789: Hermantin(News)U.S., Haiti team up on drug raid (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Fri, Jul. 20, 2007
U.S., Haiti team up on drug raid

BY JAY WEAVER AND JACQUELINE CHARLES

Launched from the Guantánamo 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 René Préval, 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 Préval, who only months ago was accusing the United 
States of fueling the narcotics trade as a consumer country.
''Préval 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
Préval 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,'' Préval 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.''
Préval 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 Préval has enunciated -- you've been put on notice.''


© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights 
Reserved.http://www.miamiherald.com
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