Proof of Guy Philippes Ties to Cocaine

San Francisco Chronicle Haiti rebels linked to drug trade Records show leaders' ties to Colombians Steven Dudley, Chronicle Foreign Service Thursday, March 4, 2004 Port-Au-Prince, Haiti -- Some of the rebel leaders who drove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power are suspected of involvement in drug trafficking, U.S. officials and Haiti experts say. While refusing to provide details, a senior Western diplomat in Haiti said in an interview with The Chronicle that criminal elements are enmeshed in the insurgency and now seek to reconstitute Haiti's formerly defunct military. According to internal documents from a regional governmental organization that closely monitors state institutions in Haiti, Guy Philippe, the rebel leader who declared himself head of the revived Haitian military on Tuesday, and Gilbert Dragon, his second-in-command, allegedly became involved in drug trafficking in the late 1990s as members of the Haitian police force. The documents were shown to The Chronicle by a Western diplomat who asked to remain anonymous. Philippe insists that neither he nor any other rebel commander has anything to do with drugs. "I'm an open book," he told The Chronicle in an interview in the northern port of Cap-Haitien, where he had set up temporary headquarters. But Bruce Bagley, a political science professor at the University of Miami who has written extensively on the Caribbean drug trade, described last week's seizure of power by the rebels as a "narco-coup." In the past decade, Haiti's role as a major route for illicit drugs into the United States has grown significantly, U.S. officials say. The drugs are typically shipped from northern Colombia in single or two-engine planes, fishing vessels, freighters and so-called go-fast boats, before arriving in Florida, the Bahamas or Puerto Rico. But the most serious charges have been leveled at the rebel leaders. According to U.S. officials, Philippe and Dragon once belonged to a group of 10 Haitians sent to Ecuador in 1995 to train as police officers. Known as "the Latinos," they quickly moved up through the ranks upon their return to Haiti and soon began accepting bribes from Colombian drug dealers to facilitate the steady flow of drugs through this island nation of 8 million. The documents shown to The Chronicle also noted that "the Latinos" routinely gave gifts to politicians and even forced the government of then- President Rene Preval in 1998 to transfer the nation's inspector general to a diplomatic post in Europe, after he implicated the group in trafficking approximately 1,600 pounds of cocaine. Philippe, who also trained with the U.S. Secret Service in 1995, fled Haiti in 2000, after he and his fellow "Latinos" were implicated in a coup plot against Aristide. A U.S. lawyer who successfully prosecuted on behalf of the Haitian government several rebels in absentia for a 1994 massacre said that that some leaders of the current insurgency such as Louis-Jodel Chamblain, once had key roles in the notorious paramilitary group known as the Front for the Advancement of the Haitian People, or FRAPH, which operated in the early 1990s. Attorney Brian Concannon said Michel Francois, the former police chief of Port-au-Prince, partly bankrolled FRAPH. Francois, charged in a 1997 U.S. federal indictment along with six others of smuggling 33 tons of cocaine to the United States for more than a decade, is now a fugitive reportedly living in Honduras. Bagley, of the University of Miami, said that whoever assumes power now will have to face the powerful traffickers: "The reality is that the state is weak; it has no money. The Haitian state doesn't operate, and the authorities are very bribable. "It's a country that's never been able to construct an effective state." Page A - 1     Posted as a reply to Msg 32 Posted in reference to: Guy Phillippe Message Posted on: 12/28/05 11:33 AM

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