Exiled Haitian police chief indicted in drug case He allegedly helped smuggle 33 tons of heroin, cocaine By Mike Clary Los Angeles Times Miami PortauPrince's exiled police chief, a shadowy, ruthless figure believed to have engineered the 1991 coup which ousted President JeanBertrand Aristide and pitched Haiti into three years of bloody turmiol, has been charged with helping to smuggle more than 33 tons of Colombian cocaine and heroin into the United States. According to an indictment unsealed here yesterday in U.S. District Court, Lt. Col. Joseph Michel Francois met facetoface with the leaders of three Colombian cartels to arrange for drug shipments to pass through Haiti via a private airstrip he helped build and protect. The 50page indictment naming 13 people was unsealed after Francois, 39, was arrested in Honduras, where he has been living under a grant of political asylum since last April. He is expected to be flown to Miami today to face formal arraignment. "It's been a major, major case," said Wilfredo Fernandez, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office. The indictment charges Francois took part in a "conspiracy to establish a cocaine and heroin distribution network through Haiti, employing in large part the political and military institutions of that county." All but three of those named in the indictment have been arrested. One of those in custody is a security worker at Miami International Airport who is accused of escorting drug couriers off flights from Haiti. Fernandez said Francois long has been the target of an investigation into drug trafficking involving former Haitian police and military leaders. He added that the Honduran government has been "extremely helpful and cooperative in arranging for the extradition." Francois fled to Honduras after he and Franck Romain, the former mayor of PortauPrince, were arrested in the Dominiacan Republic and charged with conspiring against the government of President Rene Preval. The pair had been in the Dominican Republic since October 1994, two weeks after U.S.troops escorted Aristide back to the Haitian capital. Last September Francois was convicted in absentia in Haiti and sentenced to life at hard labor for the 1993 killing of a Haitian businessman who was a major financial backer of Aristide. But long before that, Francois was wellknown to both Haitains on the street and U.S. officials in Washington as a behindthescenes power broker given to secrecy and control through a national police force that many compared to a death squad. A 1993 U.S. General Accounting Office report alleged that Francois and army chief Raoul Cedras, then heading the government, protected the annual passage of 50 tons of Colombian cocaine through Haiti. The indictment alleges that he met personally with Medellin kingpin Pablo Escobar and others to discuss U.S.bound drug shipments.

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He was arrested in Honduras and was likely to arrive in Miami under escort Saturday, law enforcement sources said. Francois is believed to have been the mastermind behind the September 1991 coup that toppled Haitian President JeanBertrand Aristide. He fled to the Dominican Republic in 1994 after U.S. troops invaded the Caribbean nation to restore Aristide to power.

He became the capital's police chief after the 1991 coup and developed a network of plainclothes policemen, or ``attaches'', who instigated a reign of terror against opponents of the military regime.

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