Pubdate: Mon, 19 Sep 2005
Source: Florida Times-Union (FL)
Copyright: 2005 The Florida Times-Union
Contact: http://www.jacksonville.com/aboutus/letters_to_editor.shtml
Website: http://www.times-union.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/155
Author: Curt Anderson, AP
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

DRUG TRIAL TO BEGIN FOR FORMER HAITIAN ANTI-NARCOTICS CHIEF

MIAMI - A top Haitian police official in the government of ousted President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide is facing trial on charges that he accepted 
thousands of dollars in bribes to help Colombian drug lords move huge loads 
of cocaine through the impoverished Caribbean country.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin later this week in the case against 
Evintz Brillant, the only one of four former senior Haitian police 
officials who has not pleaded guilty in the investigation of drug 
trafficking inside the Aristide government.

The three who pleaded guilty are expected to cooperate in the U.S. 
government's against Brillant, who has pleaded innocent and faces a life 
sentence if convicted. The trial's scheduled Monday start before U.S. 
District Judge Marcia Cooke was delayed a few days by the approach of 
Tropical Storm Rita.

According the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Brillant used his post 
as head of Haiti's top anti-drug police unit from 2001 to 2004 to help drug 
traffickers ship thousands of pounds of cocaine through Haiti, including 
the airport in the capital of Port-au-Prince, to the United States, Europe 
and elsewhere.

Brillant and other top Haitian police officials, DEA Agent Noble Harrison 
said in a court affidavit, "agreed to look the other way when shipments of 
cocaine were in transit" in exchange for bribes, some of which he used to 
pay lower-level police officers to provide security and protection for the 
drugs.

On occasion, Brillant "stopped and arrested drug traffickers for the 
purpose of receiving payments and bribes," prosecutors said in court papers.

The investigation has produced no evidence implicating Aristide, even 
though some convicted drug dealers have insisted that the former president 
was intimately involved in trafficking through Haiti. Aristide was ousted 
in February 2004 and is now living in exile in South Africa.

"There was never any evidence and there remains no evidence of it," said 
attorney Ira Kurzban, who represents Aristide in Miami. "They've been 
trying for two years. There is no case."

Brillant is specifically accused by U.S. prosecutors of being involved in 
the drug network controlled by convicted Haitian drug trafficker Sergo 
Edouard. Brillant was paid $10,000 in one instance for agreeing to protect 
drug shipments and got a share of $150,000 from another trafficker to 
provide similar security.

Although the Haitian police arrests were trumpeted as a major success in 
the war on drugs by the Bush administration, a U.S. State Department report 
issued earlier this year says that the flow of Colombian cocaine and other 
drugs through Haiti continues virtually unchallenged.

The report says that Haiti, with its 1,125 miles of virtually wide open 
coastline, clandestine airstrips, uncontrolled seaports and police 
corruption make it difficult for the Haitian government to stop the drug trade.

"Haitian drug trafficking organizations continue to operate with relative 
impunity," says the March report. "Haiti remains an important transit 
country for Colombian drug traffickers."

Freighters are most often used to transport the drugs directly from Haiti 
to the United States, concealed in shipments of legitimate items such as 
cement or in hidden compartments. Aircraft are also used, and some drugs 
are driven over the border with the Dominican Republic to be sent to Puerto 
Rico and elsewhere, the report says.

The other Haitian police officials who have pleaded guilty are Jean Nesly 
Lucien, the former national police director; Rudy Therassan, a former 
commander with the police; and Romaine Lestin, former police chief at the 
Port-au-Prince airport.

Therassan was sentenced in July to 15 years in prison, while Lucien and 
Lestin are scheduled for sentencing in November.
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