Haiti: Drugs, Thugs, the CIA, and the Deterrence of Democracy

[Octafish]

There's a reason the BFEE wants Aristide out of Haiti:
He interferes with the Bushco Division of Drug-running.

HAITI: DRUGS,THUGS, THE C.I.A., AND THE DETERRENCE OF DEMOCRACY

SNIP...

After the October 30, 1993 deadline to restore duly-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide passed unrealized, observers reported an increasing sense of fear and despair. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed since the 1991 bloody military coup which ousted Aristide. Few Americans are aware of our secret involvement in Haitian politics, nor the impact those policies have had on the US.

Some of the high military officials involved in the coup have been on the CIA's payroll from "the mid-1980s at least until the 1991 coup..." According to one government official, "Several of the principal players of the current situation were compensated by the US government."

Further, the CIA "tried to intervene in Haiti's election with a covert- action program that would have undercut the political strength" of Aristide. The aborted attempt to influence the 1988 election was authorized by then-President Ronald Reagan and the National Security Council. The program was blocked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a rare move.

Next, a confidential Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) report revealed that Haiti is "a major transshipment point for cocaine traffickers" who are funneling drugs from Colombia and the Dominican Republic into the United States. The DEA report also revealed that the drug trafficking, which is bringing one to four tons of cocaine per month into the US, worth $300-$500 million annually, is taking place with "the knowledge and active involvement of high military officials and business elites."

CONTINUED...

http://www.netti.fi/~makako/mind/haiti1.htm

[Karenina]

1. I feel a RANT coming on...

:kick:

[bobthedrummer]

2. yep

[Octafish]

8. Aristide told me the Generals ran Dope, Inc. on Haiti. Personally.

Sorry if the following is an old read. The thing held true then and holds true still…

I met Jean Bertrand-Aristide after he was deposed by the generals in the early 90s. He came to metro Detroit and spoke before the Cranbrook Peace Foundation.

The newspaper I then worked for didn’t see any reason for sending me to cover Aristide’s speech. The editors weren’t BFEE, but the events on a Caribbean island just weren’t “local” enough for their budget. So, I went on my own time.

The Cranbrook people were happy to see me. They wanted, of course, as much coverage as possible. So, they invited me and the other interested reporter types to have at him for an hour before his address.

I’m ashamed to report, at an important event in two nation’s larger media market, only a couple of CBC radio reporters out of Windsor and one local Detroit TV crew bothered to show. I was the lone print guy. Anyway…

Aristide answered every question asked in English or French. He also told us about life in Haiti, where there were four doctors to care for 4 million people. Another interesting stat: One percent of the population own 99-percent of the property.

I asked Aristide what the United States could do to help him restore democracy to Haiti? Aristide said all Poppy Doc Bush had to do was pick up the phone, call the generals and say, “Get out,” and they would quit their coup and the first democratically elected leader of Haiti in 75 years would be returned to power. Bush didn't and Aristide wasn't until Clinton sent the US Marines, many years and many Haitian lives later.

The reason for Bush Senior's inaction? Aristide said he didn’t know the answer, but he suspected Bush’s politics favored the landowners over the masses. (“Sounds familiar,” I then thought and still think today.)

Aristide said that the generals were deep into the wholesale cocaine importation business. Now who would be their partner in all that? Besides the wealthy landowners, for whom the Generals worked, I mean.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Resume - Executive Outcomes?

(Reuters/Andrew Winning)

[Octafish]

9. Notice where the weapon of the closer guy is pointed.

Note also the wear around the muzzle of what looks like a brand-new weapon. Is the worn paint a sign of frequent use?

[seemslikeadream]

4. Haiti’s Nightmare: The Cocaine Coup & The CIA Connection

Aristide’s electrifying accusations opened the floodgate of even more sinister revelations. Massachusetts senator John Kerry heads a subcommittee concerned with international terrorism and drug trafficking that turned up collusion between the CIA and drug traffickers during the late 1980s’ Iran Contra hearings.

Kerry had developed detailed information on drug trafficking by Haiti’s military rulers that led to the indictment in Miami in 1988, of Lt. Col. Jean Paul. The indictment was a major embarrassment to the Haitian military, especially since Paul defiantly refused to surrender to U.S. authorities. It was just a month before thousands of U.S. troops invaded Panama and arrested Manuel Noriega who, like Col. Paul, was also under indictment for drug trafficking in Florida.

In November 1989, Col. Paul was found dead after he consumed a traditional Haitian good will gift—a bowel of pumpkin soup. Haitian officials accused Paul’s wife of the murder, apparently because she had been cheated out of her share of a cocaine deal by associates of her husband, who were involved in smuggling through Miami.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3524444.stm

The U.S. senate also heard testimony in 1988 that then interior minister, Gen. Williams Regala, and his DEA liaison officer, protected and supervised cocaine shipments. The testimony also charged the then Haitian military commander Gen. Henry Namphy with accepting bribes from Colombian traffickers in return for landing rights in the mid 1980’s.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/415.html



Haiti's drug links are thought to date back to "Baby Doc" Duvalier
Haiti's drug money scourge

Easy money

At the same time, the rebels who ousted Mr Aristide have also been linked to the illegal drugs trade.

One of the rebel leaders, Guy Philippe, allegedly had his US visa revoked because of involvement in the drugs trade when he was police commissioner of the north coast city of Cap-Haitien.

Another prominent rebel, Jodel Chamblain, is known to have been close to Michel Francois in the early 1990s, when he was one of the leaders of the Fraph paramilitaries.

He has also been sentenced to life imprisonment for the death of a businessman and the 1994 killing of Aristide supporters.

Sympathisers of the former president have also alleged that the rebels who took control of Haiti in February 2004 were directly financed by drugs money, but there has so far been no proof of this.

[9215]

7. Great stuff seemslikeadream

as usual. :thumbsup:

[seemslikeadream]

10. Thanks and look what Condi been saying

Condi Rice lent credibility to Chavez' claim that she is an illiterate

Dissident Voice editorialist Justin Felux writes: When asked about the overthrow of Haiti's Aristide government in a television interview, Condoleezza Rice lent credibility to Hugo Chavez' claim that she is an illiterate by saying "we believe that President Aristide, in a sense, forfeited his ability to lead his people, because he did not govern democratically." She later said "Haiti is moving forward. There's a new President. There is a new prime minister. There is a new chief of police. There's an Eminent Persons Council that is trying to guide that process."....


Reports of atrocities in the countryside and the slums have been coming in on a daily basis. In one incident a container full of people was allegedly thrown into the water, allowing the people to drown. Another reported incident involved people being herded into an outhouse that was subsequently doused with gasoline and set on fire. None of these events have been confirmed, and it is unlikely that we will know the true scope of the atrocities for some time. Appeals are being made to human rights organizations to launch an investigation. In Port-au-Prince, people with dreadlocks, a hair style sometimes associated with a certain political culture, are reportedly being shot at night. Aid workers and missionaries who attempt to provide help to people are being intimidated by the armed gangs.

The disturbing events surrounding this crisis aren't limited to the island nation. Here in the United States, the media has played the role of cheerleader for the coup. White liberals, I am ashamed to say, have been eerily silent on this issue. Around the time of the coup there were a spate of articles and commentaries which lightly condemned the Bush administration, but most white liberals seem to have already forgotten where Haiti is on the map. Some have even fallen for the propaganda and declared Aristide's ouster a victory for human rights. The left should be up in arms over what this administration has done to Haiti, and not just for moral reasons...


These are questions that could put the Bush administration in a pretty awkward position, especially when it becomes clear that the US has been actively supporting the "armed opposition."

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=16428

Haiti moving forward:

[lostnfound]

19. kick nt

[Octafish]

21. Thanks, lostnfound. Here's what a member of Canada's press has to say...

The American news sources all have been making out like Aristide's the bad guy. Here's what our friends to the south (of Detroit) are saying:

New Haitian Prime Minister praises rebels


By MARINA JIMENEZ
From Monday's Globe and Mail

GONAÏVES, HAITI — In a visit rich in symbolism, Haiti's interim leader held his first rally this weekend in the city of Gonaives, where he paid tribute to the self-styled ''freedom fighters'' who ousted former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Gerard Latortue, a native of this gritty port city north of Port-au-Prince, was appointed Prime Minister after Mr. Aristide fled into exile Feb. 29. He praised the rebels, a ragtag street gang formerly known as the Cannibal Army, but he also reminded them of their promise to surrender their arms.

"People said the people of Gonaïves were thugs and bandits. But I know you are freedom fighters," Mr. Latortue, a 69-year-old economist, told the crowd of 3,000 gathered in the city's main square. He asked for a minute of silence for gangster leader Amiot Metayer, whose death sparked the rebels' Feb. 5 attack on a Gonaïves police station -- the beginning of the uprising.

There remains a virtual power vacuum in Gonaïves. The unofficial police chief is a young man named Wilfort Ferdinand, also known as T-Will, who wore a white suit and thick silver chain at Saturday's rally. His deputy is Billy Augustin, a 23-year-old with broken front teeth who worked in a Target discount store in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., until eight months ago, when he came to Haiti, bought a 9mm handgun and became commander of "the soldiers." After sharing the stage with Mr. Latortue at Saturday's rally, T-Will and Mr. Augustin surrendered a grand total of 10 weapons, mostly inoperative M-16s and rifles, at a restaurant off the city's main road. Schoolchildren and boys on bicycles were among the host of fly-swatting local residents who crammed into the restaurant to catch a glimpse of the scene.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040322.wxhaiti22/BNStory/Front/

[9215]

5. This is an outrage!!!!!

When will this country see where Bush is coming from!!?

Why is he backing a policy toward Haiti that will further the ends of the illegal drug trade?

[seemslikeadream]

14. Troops spread out from capital

Rebels won't disarm until pro-Aristides do

By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- French troops Friday began deploying to northern Haiti as U.S. troops fanned out to the east and the south, pledging to provide security to deliver food, medicine and other essential supplies disrupted during last month's rebellion.


In February, drug lord Beaudoin "Jacques" Ketant was sentenced to 27 years for money laundering and moving 41 tons of Colombian cocaine through Haiti to the United States. He told a Miami court that Aristide "turned the country into a narco-country."

Ira Kurzban, then a Miami attorney for the Haitian government, dismissed the allegations, calling Ketant "a lying, convicted drug dealer."

Aristide had accused the rebels of funding their uprising with money from the sale of illegal drugs.

http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2030595,00.html

[9215]

6. Just like Castro, the Right-Wing

in the US gets really pissed when somebody threatens the international illegal drug trade. Castro put an end to it Cuba and the Cuban Mafia has been after him ever since.

:wtf: is going on here?

[Octafish]

11. Odd, how that would work.

Keep the population ignorant -- wreck public education.
Keep the population uninformed -- buy the news media.
Keep the population dulled -- import lots of dope.
Keep the population sated -- fast food and bad television.
Keep the population subjugated -- control the economic system.

These are not mere fascists.
The members of the BFEE are monsters.

[9215]

13. Great list. I added one:

Crush self-rule--bankrupt the government.

[seemslikeadream]

12. Haiti's Dark Secret: The Restavecs

Crossing the Line Between Chores and Slavery


Josiméne, 10, and photojournalist Gigi Cohen.
Credit: Gigi Cohen
© 2004

March 20, 2004 -- Freelance producer Rachel Leventhal presents the moving story of one of Haiti's estimated 300,000 restavecs -- young children from the rural countryside literally sold to work for families in the poverty-stricken nation's urban areas.

Josiméne, 10, is a live-in maid in a two-room house outside of Port-au-Prince. Her parents are small farmers in Haiti's remote and mountainous heartland.

Among other duties, Josiméne cares for two younger children, cleans the house, washes dishes, scrubs laundry by hand, runs errands and sells small items from the family's informal store.

As part of the Child Poverty Photo Project, photojournalist Gigi Cohen briefly got to know Josiméne. In the course of her work, Cohen heard about the life the young girl lives as a servant and the life she left behind.

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1779562

Listen to the interviews!

[oasis]

15. A kick to expose the Bush sleaze empire.

[Octafish]

24. In memory of Ricardo Ortega

Thanks, oasis! Been busier than a crooked bean counter at Hastert's GAO of late.

Here's a compelling essay on the passing of a real journalist, shot dead while covering the BFEE-led coup:


In memory of Ricardo Ortega

by Daniel Estulin
(Tuesday 09 March 2004)

"You may feel that there is an implication that loss may actually be sought, although not perversely, not for its own sake. A loss is a reality displaced; reality is a rehearsal for dream. Regret is a fulfillment rather than an accident."

This is the last time we saw him alive, an average size man with a microphone, gazing out from the screen, meeting our eyes, but unable to recognise them, to help and to comfort because he is only a photographed figure and cannot see beyond the flat world which contains him. He is alive because he moves and because he speaks, because he was alive when the film was taken; but also dead—photographed people always are, already a memory.

SNIP...

Ricardo Ortega was pronounced clinically dead on March 7, 2004. It was supposed to have been his last afternoon as himself, as Auden said of the day Yeats died: "he became his admirers". He became a memory; disappeared into his name. It is one of the mysteries of death that it should seem to make so little difference to all but those close to the person. What has changed? There will be no more reports, interviews, books, jokes, walks, talks from that source. But what if the life and its memory we lost is already deep and rich, enough for our lifetime? What more do we want? Most will not be able to meet the person, the reporter, the journalist, the foreign correspondent they probably should not have met anyway. Such deaths are like the deaths of acquaintances we have not seen for ages, would never have seen again. A scarcely perceptible shift in what was already an absence. Except for us, in Spain, this man was ours. This person was not a person for us, not merely a reputation either. His name stood for habits of decency, ways of looking and thinking; they altered the colour of mind of those who watched and listened to him. This life of his cannot be changed by his death. Time in this context is a matter not of the clock but of chance and temperature.

I start with these mementoes because I am about to talk about what was to become a short while later, a fictional and a metaphorical death, and I want to give physical death its due—a mark of piety towards what is actually irreplaceable, un-transferable in those lives now gone.

Like the rest of us, people die at least twice. Once physically, once notionally; when the heart stops and when forgetting begins. The lucky ones, the great ones, are those whose second death is decently, perhaps indefinitely postponed. But I want to shield Ricardo from this untimely, terrible death, which momentarily was forced on him by his executioners. I will weave him into this essay, thus his death could only be unmasked as a fiction, as a fragment of faith. Death reveals that there has been no life, only a dream of life.

CONTINUED...

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/5467/

BTW: The western press blames "Aristide supporters" for the gunfire that claimed Mr. Ortega.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1164642,00.html

[seemslikeadream]

25. Ricardo Ortega, veteran reporter

37 year old Ricardo Ortega, a veteran reporter for the Spanish television station Antena 3, seen in this undated tv image, was shot and later died while covering the conflict in Haiti, Sunday March 7, 2004. Gunmen opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters demanding that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide be tried for alleged corruption and killings by his armed militants. At least 5 people including Ortega were reported to have been killed. (AP Photo/EFE)



Medical workers attend to television journalist Ricardo Ortega at the Canapevert Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, March 7, 2004. (Reuters/Daniel Morel)



The bodies of three other people, including Spanish correspondent Ricardo Ortega, for Antena 3 of Spain, lie in a makeshift morgue in the Canapevert Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, March 7, 2004. (Reuters/Daniel Morel)



Workers at the Canapevert Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, carry the body of Spanish carrespondent Ricardo Ortega of Antena 3 of Spain after he was shot to death by ousted Haitian dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who armed, trained and financed the terrorists to help him perpetuate the dictatorship of the proletariat.. (Reuters/Daniel Morel)

[peacetalksforall]

16. There sure are more than ample details in these threads about

the crimes of the anti-Aristede criminals and their U.S.and CIA supporters, benefactors, trainers, and handlers.

There are no solid details about the crimes of Aristede. It's about time that the administration reported Aristededes' crimes or made some up so we can start getting into the details - dates, times, witnesses, and rock solid case - in a court of law.

What to do in the meantime - try to get every freaking drug user to stop making the U.S. and their cooperating agents rich.

In the meantime - demand to know why the French are working with this administration to promote criminals from Haiti's past - a fall back to the Duvaliers and their dictating atrocities. Something is very fishy about France not supporting Haiti's President.

Where is Jimmy Carter - has anyone heard a word out of his mouth about what we are doing?

[seemslikeadream]

17. Interesting photo

[seemslikeadream]

20. US and France Kiss and Makeup, Haitian Democracy Dies

by Justin Felux
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 6, 2004


Leave it to the New York Times to turn the bloody overthrow of a democratically elected President into a veritable love story. In an article published on March 3rd entitled "U.S. and France Set Aside Differences in Effort to Resolve Haiti Conflict" the newspaper of record reported that "the joint diplomacy over Haiti is a dramatic example of how the longtime allies can set aside differences, find common ground, play to their strengths and even operate in an atmosphere of trust." The story goes on to weave a tale so charming and rosy that one would never guess scores of people were being needlessly slaughtered in the background.


Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, described Aristide's ouster as being the result of "perfect coordination" between the U.S. and France. In addition, "Mr. Bush telephoned Mr. Chirac to express delight over 'the excellent French-American cooperation in Haiti' and to 'thank France for its action.'" Colin Powell and Dominique de Villepin also managed to mend fences during the crisis: "During the Iraq crisis, Mr. Powell and Mr. de Villepin each felt betrayed by the other. . . But that was then. The Haiti crisis has required Mr. Powell and Mr. de Villepin to consult regularly by phone, sometimes more than once a day."


Am I the only one who finds this disgusting? They should have taken it a step further and described the way Colin's heart would begin to race when he picked up the phone and heard Dominique's voice on the other end. Colin never felt comfortable having to constantly worry whether or not Dominique was still mad at him. They could also describe how Dominique longed for the days when he and Colin used to be friends, and how he could scarcely remember the last time they smiled at one another. Ever since they got into that fight about Iraq their relationship hadn't been the same. Colin seemed so cold and distant.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Felux0306.htm

[Octafish]

23. Thanks for caring so much, seemslikeadream!

Here's an excellent recap of what's going on for those who haven't understood as well as you and the many DUers who care so very much. Third World Traveler is an EXCELLENT resource on many issues of interest, BTW:

Trials of Haiti

by Tracy Kidder
The Nation magazine, October 27, 2003

EXCERPT...

All over Haiti, you see boys and girls carrying water, balancing plastic buckets on their heads as they trek long distances up and down the hillsides of Port-au-Prince or climb steep footpaths in the countryside. Many of the water-carriers are orphans, known as restavek-children who work as indentured servants for poor families. Contaminated water is one of the causes of Haiti's extremely high rate of maternal mortality, the main reason there are so many orphans available for carrying water. "Sanitation service systems are almost nonexistent," reads one development report. Many Haitians drink from rivers or polluted wells or stagnant reservoirs, adding citron, key lime juice, in the belief that this will make the water safe. The results are epidemic levels of diseases such as typhoid, and a great deal of acute and chronic diarrhea, which tends to flourish among children under 5, especially ones who are malnourished. Hunger is rampant. "Haitians today are estimated to be the fourth most undernourished people on earth, after Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia," the World Bank reported in 2002. The cures for many water-borne ailments are simple. But in Haiti, it's estimated (almost certainly overestimated) that only 60 percent have access even to rudimentary healthcare. In the countryside, the vast majority have to travel at least an hour, over paths and main roads that resemble dry riverbeds, to reach health centers, which not only charge fees that most can't afford to pay but also lack the most basic provisions.

Last winter, I visited the centerpiece of Haiti's public health system, the University Hospital in Port-au-Prince. It was founded in 1918, during the time when American Marines occupied and essentially ran the country. It's a large complex of concrete buildings in the center of the city, and it seemed to be open when I arrived. My Haitian guide and I strolled over toward the pediatric wing. It seemed unnaturally quiet. No babies crying. Inside, the reason was obvious. There were no doctors or nurses or patients in sight, only a young male custodian, who explained that the doctors had recently ended a strike but that the nurses had now launched one of their own. Strikes at the hospital are frequent; this one had to do with current political strife.

"Where did the sick children go?" I asked my Haitian guide.

"They went home." She made a face. "To die."

We walked past rows of empty metal cribs, and then, turning a corner, down at the end of a long row of old metal beds with bare, stained mattresses, we saw a lone patient. A girl Iying on her side, very thin in the arms and legs, with a swollen belly. Her mother, standing beside the bed, explained that the girl had been sick for a long time. The doctors said she had typhoid. When the strike began, the mother and daughter had simply stayed, because the mother didn't know what else to do. But a doctor did stop in now and then, and had left behind some pills. At the hospital, the morgue, at least, was functioning. I looked into the one reserved for victims of diseases, mostly diseases that could have been prevented or cured. The door was made of corroded metal, like the door to a meat locker. The room inside was filled with trays on racks, stacked horizontally, several bodies per tray, the majority children, the little girls still in their dresses, bows in the hair.

Diarrhea alone kills sixty-eight Haitian children out of every 1,000 before the age of 5. Did many of the people in the morgue die because of dirty water? I asked the medical director.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/Trials_Haiti_Kidder.html

[Tinoire]

18. The drug-dealing FRAPH has full immunity to do as they like :(

Port-au-Prince, March 19, 2004 -(AHP)- The Comité des Avocats pour le Respect des Libertés Individuelles (CARLI) (Committee of Lawyers for the Respect of Individual Liberties) said Friday it was deeply preoccupied by the impunity of some of the people who committed exactions on the population during the military coup of 1991.

According to CARLI, these individuals, of whom Louis Jodel Chamblain and Jean Pierre alias Jean Tatoune, are a real threat to Haitian society.

<snip>

CARLI's executive secretary, Renand Hédouville, said that, when talking about human rights, no crime should go unpunished. The perpetrators of the 1991 coup massacres who are still walking the streets in impunity should be brought before a court of law, Renand Hédouville said.

He also asked that those who 'mysteriously' escaped prison should be sent back to jail.


<snip>

Guy Philippe's men are still active in Artibonite, the North, Northwest, Plateau-Central and Northeast where they are accused of perpetrating serious exactions on the local population.

AHP 19 March 2004 3:45 PM

http://www.ahphaiti.org/eng.html

===


NCHR asks that Louis Jodel Chamblain and Jean Tatoune be sent to jail and says an investigation was opened on the case of Lavalas activists who were apparently drowned in a container at Cap-Haïtien

Port-au-Prince, March 19, 2004 -(AHP)- The National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) has asked Friday that FRAPH leader, Louis Jodel Chamblain, and Jean Pierre alias Jean Tatoune be arrested and sent directly to jail, as both of them should be sentenced to life for their participation in slaughters against the Haitian people.

This call by the NCHR comes about 22 days after these 2 confirmed criminals were accused of participating in the murder of many police officers and civilians during the fighting which led to the overthrow of President Aristide.


<snip>

In Port-au-Prince, many sectors state that most human rights organizations had stayed shut on these 2 men's actions when they lead the opposition's fight at the Gonaïves and other regions of the country to overthrow President Aristide.

<snip>

The NCHR coordinator announced there would soon be an investigation on the case of Lavalas activists who were killed at Cap-haïtien on February 22 when Cap-Haïtien went down to the rebels. The victims were apparently locked in a container before being drowned at sea.

An investigation is also underway on the bloody events at St-Marc before and after President Aristide's departure. Guy Philippe's men killed supporters and opponents of President Aristide as well as many other citizens at Petit-Gôave and Cayes.

AHP 19 March 2004 2:05 PM

===

Citizens held prisoners at sea on a boat from the Haitian coast guard could be in serious trouble
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<snip>

Port-au-Prince, March 19, 2004 -(AHP)- Many members of the political organization Fanmi Lavalas and police officers who were arrested on Friday, March 13 at Port-au-Prince are held prisoners at sea on a boat from the Haitian coast guard at Bizoton (South of the capital).

Among others, there are division commissioner Jacques Anthony Nazaire, who was one of the managers of security for President Aristide; SMCRS manager, Paul Keller, police officer Pétion Ospide and a former pro-mayor of Port-au-Prince, Harold Sevère.

One of these prisoners, Anthony Nazaire, who suffers from a handicap to an arm after the December 17, 2001 attack on the national palace left him with serious injuries, is allegedly in serious trouble, the AHP learned.

<snip>


http://www.haitienmarche.com

[Octafish]

22. Friends of the BFEE: Liars, Thieves, Drug-runners, Murderers...

...Sounds like home. And, believe me, the BFEE wants to base America on the Haitian business model.

Great post, Tinoire. Thanks for putting some names on the Bush "Friends List."

Here's a bit of background from one who knows why this is worth caring about:


Haiti at brink again - US owes help

By Randall Robinson

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS – Ten years ago, I risked my life by embarking on a hunger strike. It was a desperate attempt to change America's Haiti policy. In the 28th day of my fast, President Clinton announced that the US would pursue a more just Haiti policy. Shortly thereafter, a US-led multinational force reinstalled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted in a military coup. Haiti's first democratically elected president, Mr. Aristide had won in a landslide, and I was proud to stand with the Haitian people - and him.

Today, Aristide - who stepped down at the end of his first term and was reelected to the presidency in 2000 - is under attack again. Political unrest is rocking the poverty-stricken nation - including protests both for and against the president. And a summit of Caribbean Community representatives has begun a series of meetings to resolve the crisis. This week they are meeting with Aristide opponents who accuse him of trampling on civil rights and are demanding he step down.


Again, I stand with this leader and his right to complete his five-year term. And again, I urge the US - the world's most powerful democracy - to resolutely embrace Haiti's democratically elected president.

How has Aristide - who was so loved and revered - ended up the focus of calls for his ouster?

Aristide may have failings in his ability to negotiate the vicious power divide between Haiti's economic elite and its broader masses, but US policy has created an environment in which it is impossible for him to succeed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0123/p11s01-coop.html

[seemslikeadream]

26. Return Aristide to Haiti: Try Bush as a Global Pirate

Rebel leader Guy Philippe center smiles during a demonstration in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Tuesday, March 2, 2004. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)


Return Aristide to Haiti: Try Bush as a Global Pirate
By Analysis
Mar 13, 2004, 11:17


March 11, 2004-The Bush men have the Madness Touch. Their very presence warps conventional notions of reality.

Thus, the new "prime minister" of Haiti appears as surprised as the rest of his countrymen when conveyed the title by an "eminent" rump of persons chosen by the occupying power. The man picked for the job on Tuesday, business consultant Gérard Latortue, doesn’t even arrive in Haiti from his home in Boca Raton, Florida, until Wednesday. U.S. Marines believe they have killed Haitian gunmen in battle, but seem unconcerned as to their identities. Half a world away, the constitutional head of state, elected with overwhelming popular support in a process deemed free and fair by the entire international community, is held captive by an African military dictator after being kidnapped by the world’s superpower in cahoots with the former colonial master of his country.

The world searches for terminology to describe the high crimes of the Bush regime in Haiti and the Central African Republic, and of course, Iraq – even as endless additional criminal contingencies take shape in the planning rooms of the Pentagon. The Bush men seem determined to methodically teach the planet that Washington is a threat to the very concept of international order – that they are Pirates.

Evidence that George Bush is leader of a rogue, pirate state accumulates daily, for the world to examine in the raw. Yet the racist cabal (and its Black operatives) seem not to understand that Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide cannot be demonized like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The nightmare image is seared into the global retina: the frail ex-priest and his wife, kidnapped from their home and delivered to the tender mercies of coup-making African generals.

If the Bush men are on an international consciousness raising mission, they are succeeding. Whatever perverse logic guides their actions – and we have seen such logic at work in the world, before, when small groups of men tested their "will" against the survival instincts of the planet – they are in fact summoning a future "tribunal" whose mandate must expand to match the crimes of the American perpetrators. There will be a response to this avalanche of atrocities that "are so harmful to international interests that states are entitled – and even obliged – to bring proceedings against the perpetrator, regardless of the location of the crime or the nationality of the perpetrator or victim," to borrow the words of Mary Robinson, former United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5615.shtml