Hti: Aristide the Godfather of the Haitian drug trade

So says Beaudoin Ketant. The text that follows is a very rough translation of of a story that appeared in Le Monde.

"He has betrayed me like Judas betrayed Christ." It was the 25th February, four days before the flight of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A little before being sentenced to 27 years in prison and $30M in fines by a federal court in Miami, Beaudoin "Jacques" Ketant accused Aristide of being the Godfather of drug trafficking in Haiti.

Owner of an mansion evaluated at $8M, in Vivi Michel on the heights overlooking Port au Prince, exhibitng the works of Picasso and Monet, Ketant was known to have distributed more than 40 tons of Colombian cocaine to the U.S. over 12 years. "Aristide was the boss. I paid him over the years. One had to pay him or one died," he has declared before the court. A partner of the main Colombian cartels of Medellin, Cali, and North Valley, Beaudoin "Jacques" Ketant started in the drug trade with Colonel Michel Francois, one of the brain of the coup which had overthrown Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991. This former chief of police is a refugee in Honduras, a country which does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

Ketant had acknowledged (?) direct relations with President Aristide since their meeting, in 1998, through the intermediary of a trafficker. He described him as "compadre," a friendly expression common in Latin America. Beaudoin Ketant affirmed that he handed over about $500K per month for the exclusive use of the National 9, where the police stopped the traffic to allow the landing of cocaine filled planes. Ketant also paid about $500K annually to the Family Lavalas, the presidential party, and regularly sent huge amounts to the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, which was received in prison through his lawyer, Ruben Oliva, acting as intermediary.

In February, a younger brother of Beaudoin Ketant, Hector, was killed in his home in a raid by the Investigation and Intervention Brigade (BRI). "Aristide needed money to finance carnival. Usually, he took 30%, but this time, he wanted 80% of the gross shipment of more than 1,400lbs. Negotiations took a bad turn and Rudy Therassan fired on Hector and on one of his body guards, Hermann Charles,"... Today, a refugee in Miami where he works for the DEA, the head of the BRI, Rudy Terassan, is at the heart of an arrangement put in place to prohibit drug trafficking.

In Mai, Beaudoin "Jacques" ketant and his body guards sparked a scandal at Union School, the very fashionable bilingual college of Port au Prince, where one of his sons cotoie (?) the children ofAmerican diplomats. Outraged, the U.S. ambassor protested directly to Aristide, who was needed then to get funds from international aid, frozen since the post-election crisis of 2000. 17th June, Ketant was summoned to the presidential palace where he was, in his own words, "kidnapped" and delivered to five DEA agents.... "A little while after he had delivered Ketant, Aristide obtained the funds from the InterAmerican Development Bank," a diplomat noted.

After that, official American reports noted that Haiti "is an important trans-shipment point for cocaine from South America toward the U.S." and described the corruption of the authorities, which permitted traffickers to operate without encumbrance. The American press has published a number of articles on this subject. Twelve years ago, the Wall Street Journal cited Mario Andresol, former director of the Haitian Judicial Police (?), who is in existe: "The traffickers work with Aristide.... The people who have been arrested for drug trafficking have been noticed (?) at the side of the police."

"It is hard to imagine that Aristide did not participate in this extremely lucrative and criminal activity," former general Barry McCaffrey, who was responsible for the anti-drug war of President Bill Clinton,recently declared in a television interview. Other than Ketant, fifty of the other Haitian traffickers are under surveillance in the U.S. One ofthem, Eliobert Jasme, nicknamed "Edi1," the name of his construction business, has untilnow refused to speak but has chosen the same lawyer, Frank Rubino, as the former Panamanian president Manuel Noriega....

The recent arrest, in Toronto, of Oriel Jean, foremer chief of presidential security, is still more menacing for Aristide. Extradited to the U.S., Oriel Jean has been charged with cocaine trafficking by a federal grand jury in Miaimi. According to a DEA informer, a former Haitian druf trafficker, Oriel Jean levied $50K for each cargo of cocaine which arrived by air in Haiti.

"The American know perfectly well what is happening. I have personally conveyed information to their people which they have not had before (?) (an alternative is "which they have not acted upon") They know the importance of narco-trafficking to the Haitian economy. My impression is that they prefer to close their eyes so they don't have to take Haiti in charge." confided a general at the border of the neighboring Dominican Republic. At the end of 1990, many of the informers in the frontline had indicated to him that a peice of the trafficking action went to Aristide's Foundation

For Washington, illegal immigration is the chief menace coming from the Greater Antilles. The attack of the Killick naval base by a group of chimeres, Aristide supporters, has been one of the decisive factors which has pushed the American government to demand Aristide's departure, a little after France did. Situated on the souther end of Port au Prince, this coast guard base has the control of the the boat people as its chief mission. The attack prompted an urgent cabinet meeting at the White House, 27th February, in the course of which the Caricom plan, which opted for the retention of Aristide in power until the end of his term in 2006, was abandoned by Washington.

For the Americans, the drug problem takes second place after the risk of a massive tide of refugees, and is often used as a means of pressure to see "chantage" (?) Many members of the Bush administration are advocates of a swift indictment of Jean-Bertrand Aristide for narcotics trafficking. The recent suspension of his U.S. visa can be seen as a first step. Others prefer to keep this threat as a sword of Damocles. "The more he opens his mouth, the closer his indictment draws," says a bureaucrat working on the case.

In a discussion of rare openness, July 9 2003, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Briann Dean Curran, at the end of his tour, denounced the tolerance of Haitian society to drug trafficking. "The traffickers are well known. They buy supplies in the stores; you sell them houses or build new ones for them; you take their deposits; you educate their children," he shot at the terrified members of the American Chamber of Commerce of Haiti, the business elite in the country. "In Haiti, traffickers have no need to hide themselves. Everyone knows," a diplomat confirmed. Everyone, beginning with the Americans. Why have they not used this dossier against Aristide, as they have done against Manuel Noriega, the former president of Panama who is rotting in a Miami prison since 1989?

Jeez, what it is to be the U.S.! Damned if you, and damned if you don't!