There's a place(s) in Haiti cops can't even go in as the cats there got weapons too that the cops are
on.
The haitian elite is mostly made up of Syrian and Arab jews(middle eastern). Came in Haiti around 1888 through 1950's under the U.S. guidance. With Connection to U.S intelligence, death squads, paramilitaries, drug trafficking , organ trafficking , and human trafficking
President Jovenel Moïse (center) replaced his PetroCaribe-tainted chief of staff Wilson Laleau (right) with Nahomme Dorvil (left).With less than 22% of the electorate voting, former President Michel Martelly’s protégé businessman Jovenel Moïse won a controversial first-round victory in the Nov. 20, 2016 presidential election. Resulting over-confidence may explain his arrogance, flippancy, boondoggles, straight-faced lies, and absurd declarations in the first 17 months of his five year term.
But a virulent uprising over fuel price hikes in July and last Wednesday’s giant march in the capital (and almost all provincial cities) to demand answers and justice for the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars of Venezuela-provided PetroCaribe funds has thrown the Haitian government into disarray and crisis.
Last year, Moïse was openly belittling the looting of the PetroCaribe fund and sabotaging Parliamentary probes. Now completely on the defensive, he is championing an investigation.
On Oct. 22, Moïse fired his right-hand man, chief of staff Wilson Laleau, as well as the Secretary General of the Presidency, Yves Germain Joseph, due to their implication in the expanding PetroCaribe corruption scandal.
They are to be replaced, respectively, by businessman Nahomme Dorvil and former National Palace accountant Jean Hilbert Lebrun.
IT IS CLEAR THAT MOÏSE AND CÉANT ARE TRYING TO GET OUT IN FRONT OF A LOOMING WAVE OF PROTESTS WHICH SHOWS ALL SIGNS OF GROWING IN SIZE AND MOMENTUM
“The president has decided to rid the environment of people linked to Petrocaribe without admitting they are guilty of anything,” said new Prime Minister Jean-Henry Céant (his predecessor, Jack Guy Lafontant, was forced to resign a week after the July riots). “The courts will decide who is guilty and who is not.”
In addition to those two Minister-ranking officials, Moïse axed 16 with the title of “presidential advisor,” Haiti’s principal patronage post. Among them are prominent, perennial right-wing spokesmen like former International Republican Institute (IRI) operative Stanley Lucas, Advisor on Foreign Policy, External Aid, and Direct Foreign Investment; Duvalierist lawyer Reynold Georges, Special Advisor on Judicial and Political Affairs; former Haitian Army officer and Justice Minister Jean Renel Sanon, Advisor on Intelligence and Security; former Senator for the Struggling People’s Organization (OPL) Andris Riché, Political Advisor; and former journalist Lucien Jura, a Martelly and Moïse official spokesman and Communications Advisor.
Although they’ve been terminated, the presidential advisors may be reappointed down the line. Moïse’s main purpose, in neo-Duvalierist tradition, is to give the impression of big change because heads are rolling.
But the Haitian masses clearly see that the firings are completely cosmetic, which will likely encourage them to ever greater protests, like the next nationwide PetroCaribe march on Nov. 18, the 215th anniversary of the Battle of Vertières, in which Haitians won their independence from France.
(Prime Minister Céant announced on Oct. 22 the formation of an “Independent Commission to Research the Truth” about the PetroCaribe Fund’s looting.)
Also on Oct. 22, Prime Minister Céant announced that he is forming an “Independent Commission to Research the Truth” which would include “Civil Society personalities” and “be assisted by a foreign accounting and auditing firm.”
Among the groups he tweeted he hopes to attract to his initiative are representative from the likes of “the ANMH [National Association of Haitian Media], Chambers of Commerce, the PetroCaribe Challenge movement, the [lawyers’] bars of the republic, etc..”
But spokespeople for the PetroCaribe Challenge movement behind last week’s marches flatly rejected the invitation saying they wanted to see those responsible for the huge theft “tried and convicted.”
The ANMH and the Association of Haiti’s Independent Media (AMIH) also backed away from Céant’s invitation, calling it “inopportune,” and even the Catholic Church, a regular participant in such charades, has expressed its reluctance.
As for the proposal that a “foreign accounting and auditing firm” investigate the PetroCaribe fund, Haitian blogger Dady Chery points out that this was the proposal of the U.S. establishment’s right-wing Heritage Foundation in September. “No one asks where a private U.S. conservative think tank got the authority to demand a probe into a bilateral deal between Haiti and Venezuela,” she wrote on her blog, Haiti Chery, suggesting it would be an attempt by Washington to “implicate Venezuelan officials in the corruption” and thereby force cornered Haitian officials to “join the move to condemn Venezuela’s elections.” Such tactics could help bring “the downfall of Venezuela [which] would be a tragedy for all Latin America and the Caribbean,” she writes.
Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince prosecutor Clamé Ocnam Daméus has begun his own crusade into the PetroCaribe fray, summoning former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe for questioning on Tue., Oct. 23. (For a second time, Lamothe did not show up, this time due to a lawyers strike, his lawyers said at the court.) On Wed., Oct. 24, Daméus will question Patrice Milfort, who heads General Construction S.A,, one of the major contractors for PetroCaribe projects.
(Port-au-Prince prosecutor Clamé Ocnam Daméus has begun his own crusade into the PetroCaribe fray.)
But Sonel Jean-François, the former head of Haiti’s anti-corruption office UCREF, called Daméus’ inquest an “illegal and demagogic-political approach,” because the PetroCaribe matter is already being investigated by an examining magistrate.
“This decision by the state prosecutor has no legal basis,” Jean-François said. “If Mr. Ocnam Clamé Daméus dares to arrest any person in connection with this case, he will automatically make that person innocent. That’s the danger… Legally, Mr. Daméus has no right to take any parallel action while the investigating judge looks into the Petrocaribe case that is pending.”
The Moïse government has told the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Litigation (CSCCA) to investigate the PetroCaribe dossier and “the body has pledged to release its work in early 2019,” explains Jake Johnston on the Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog on Oct. 16. “However, there are reasons to be skeptical that this can lead to accountability. To begin with, the CSCCA is responsible for approving government contracts, meaning that the body now set to investigate is the one that already signed off on most of the contracts in question. Further, many question the ability of the CSCCA, or of any governmental body, to adequately and independently investigate.”
THE BODY NOW SET TO INVESTIGATE IS THE ONE THAT ALREADY SIGNED OFF ON MOST OF THE CONTRACTS IN QUESTION.
But, Johnston continues, “perhaps most importantly, the CSCCA has already produced a report on a limited amount of Petrocaribe spending and despite finding significant problems, nothing was ever done to follow up. In fact, it was the work of the CSCCA that originally provided the basis for the Senate to investigate Petrocaribe. By kicking the investigation back to the court, the cycle of investigation continues, while the prospect of real accountability dithers.”
Then on Oct. 23, it was reported that four gunmen fired on the white Toyota Land Cruiser of Joverlin Moïse, President Moïse’s son, as the vehicle drove down Port-au-Prince’s Nazon road. The young man was not in the bullet-proofed vehicle, which sustained some bullet holes. The government sought to play down the incident, issuing a statement for “the population not to give in to disinformation practices that have become commonplace in recent times in the country.”
As we go to press, it is unclear who or what was behind this shooting. But it is clear that Moïse and Céant are trying to get out in front of a looming wave of protests which shows all signs of growing in size and momentum, possibly threatening the regime’s survival. The call for Jovenel Moïse’s resignation is a universal refrain in the demonstrations and on the radio.
After obstructing the investigation a few months ago, on Oct. 18, the day after the protest, Jovenel Moïse tweeted that he had instructed Céant to mobilize “the judicial apparatus so that light can be shed on the use of the PetroCaribe Fund. Nobody will escape justice.”
As someone who came into office indicted for laundering millions which many suspect were siphoned from the PetroCaribe Fund, that is one tweet Jovenel may someday regret.
The original source of this article is News Junkie PostThis move by the Heritage Foundation came two months after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended a hike in Haiti’s gas prices. This rise in fuel cost was like throwing fire on gasoline, because it was simultaneous with violent protests and popular demands for an audit into the PetroCaribe funds. Until 2016, the generous PetroCaribe deal had allowed Haiti to pay 60 percent of market price for oil bought from Venezuela and delay paying the rest for more than 25 years at 1 percent interest. This program was unwelcome by the US because it allowed occupied Haiti a modicum of financial independence: it kept the price of fuel low while saving the country an average of over $200 million a year, presumably to finance social programs and construction projects.
When the July 2018 protests got out of hand, pundits declared that Haiti’s government would fall. But how could a government fall that was not standing in the first place? The main problem was that even rich Haitians like Reginald Boulos suffered from the violence. So somebody was punished: namely, the Prime Minister, Jack Guy Lafontant, who resigned. In effect, one set of installed crooks was replaced by another. Funds from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), World Bank, and IMF have been stolen by Haitian officials for many years, but they appear to interest no one. About $9.5 billion of earthquake reconstruction funds disappeared in three years from Clinton’s I-HRC, but that is also forgotten.
The sudden acute interest in the PetroCaribe funds, which amount to about $1.7 billion that were mostly embezzled over eight years but apparently not noticed until now, is all the more fascinating because it coincides with a grab of Haiti’s electric grid, attempts to extract mining concessions from Haitian officials, and importantly, efforts to garner Haiti’s support for an intervention of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Venezuela that would surely lead to massive bloodshed, followed by another acronym United Nations peacekeeping operation.
Curiously, the July protests were repeated on October 17 peacefully and with only male protestors between 16 and 30 years old. Are we to believe that women, who traditionally head most Haitian families, are uninterested in government fraud and less peaceful? I can certainly think of one Haitian institution that can quickly assemble as many as 16,000 young men…. But let us put aside these observations for a moment and pretend that all the protests are legitimate. If so, then it is reasonable to assume that, while angry Haitians were burning tires and hitting the pavement, the Heritage Foundation and its branch, Transparency International, were at a table making demands from the cornered Haitian crooks. Would they sign away Haiti’s electric grid and mining rights, implicate Venezuelan officials in the corruption, and join the move to condemn Venezuela’s elections if threatened with prison? The answer is a definite yes.
Corrupt or not, the downfall of Venezuela would be a tragedy for all Latin America and the Caribbean. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: when you march, make sure you know who is representing you inside in the negotiations, else you might discover too late that you were working against your own best interests.
Update:3
Growing Anti-Corruption Movement Sets the Once Swaggering Haitian Government Back on its Heels
October 24, 2018
President Jovenel Moïse (center) replaced his PetroCaribe-tainted chief of staff Wilson Laleau (right) with Nahomme Dorvil (left).
There's a place(s) in Haiti cops can't even go in as the cats there got weapons too that the cops are
On Sun., Aug. 5, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse nominated two-time presidential candidate Jean Henry Céant, 61, leader of the Renmen Ayiti (Love Haiti) party, to be his next prime minister.
If approved by Parliament, Céant would replace Jack Guy Lafontant, who resigned on Sat., Jul. 14 as Moïse’s first prime minister following a three-day nationwide uprising from Jul. 6-8 (and then a two-day general strike), which resulted in a few deaths and dozens of businesses being burned or damaged. The rebellion against corruption, waste, and austerity, which is still smoldering, was sparked by steep fuel price hikes on gasoline (38%), diesel (47%), and kerosene (51%).
Moïse’s announced his choice over Twitter (as he had for Lafontant) after two days of protracted negotiations with parliamentarians.
Trained as a lawyer, Céant has a genial personality but is widely viewed and reviled by the Haitian people as a “land thief” (volè tè) for his conduct as a notaireor notary, who in Haiti is a cross between an accountant and lawyer supposedly safeguarding the titles to their clients’ land. Almost every notaire is accused, rightly or wrongly, of absconding with land titles, often after their clients die.
But Céant is also viewed as a traitor. In the 1990s and 2000s, Céant was the notaire for former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, helping him purchase land in the Port-au-Prince suburb Tabarre for his residence and the Aristide Foundation for Democracy and its university (UNIFA).
(From left to right, Senate President Joseph Lambert, PM nominee Jean Henry Céant, President Jovenel Moïse, and Deputies President Gary Bodeau.)
But during Aristide’s 2004-2011 exile in South Africa, things soured between the two men, and Céant unsuccessfully ran for president under the banner of Renmen Ayiti in the 2010 election.
In a Nov. 10, 2009 U.S. Confidential cable provided by Wikileaks to Haïti Liberté, then Ambassador Kenneth Merten (who now heads the U.S. State Department’s Haiti Desk) described the “Prospects for Fanmi Lavalas in the 2010 Elections.” He grouped Céant under the heading of “Lavalas Activists in Other Political Parties,” writing that he was “Aristide’s notary and personal friend.”
Merten also reported that Céant “was an early supporter of Aristide, and is thought to have helped Aristide in meeting property ownership requirements so he could run for President. Céant’s brother, Harry Céant, was at the head of CONATEL (Haiti’s equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission) under Aristide. Céant’s wealth (by Haitian standards), combined with his ties to Aristide, raises suspicions about his past dealings.”
But when right-wing former konpa singer Michel Martelly won an illegal, controversial election in 2011, Céant was quick to flip to the neo-Duvalierist camp, proudly mugging for cameras at the post-inauguration party of the new president whom he had trenchantly denounced during the campaign.
“Céant is a consummate opportunist,” explained Henriot Dorcent, a Haitian political analyst who speaks on the weekly Sunday Radio Panou program Truth Serum/Haiti on the Airwaves. “Under the dictatorship of Gen. Prosper Avril, he worked closely with lawyer Réné Julien, who was Céant’s mentor and Avril’s cousin. But when the political winds shifted, he joined Aristide and the Lavalas, acting as Aristide’s notaire and getting jobs for his wife as Aristide’s private secretary and his brother in CONATEL. Then he jumped into the Martelly camp, where he headed the project to remove people from their homes in downtown Port-au-Prince after the earthquake without compensating them. When Jovenel came to power, there was a scathing report by Haiti’s anti-corruption unit UCREF detailing Jovenel’s money-laundering through his business Agritrans. Who was the first to jump to Jovenel’s defense, saying the excellent report was a fabrication? Jean-Henry Céant!”
To top it all off, when former paramilitary leader Guy Philippe was arrested by Haitian police and handed over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on drug trafficking charges just before Jovenel Moïse’s inauguration in 2017, Céant shrilly called on Jovenel to do everything in his power to defend Philippe and win his release. Guy Philippe had played a leading role in the second coup d’étatagainst Aristide in February 2004.
In 2012, after Martelly was in power and Aristide had returned to Haiti, Céant appeared to have played a role in trying to reopen an indictment against Aristide on corruption charges (see Haïti Liberté, Vol. 5, No. 33, Feb. 29, 2012).
(Jean-Henry Céant and President Martelly (with their wives) at the latter’s May 2011 post-inauguration party.)
Jean-Henry Céant was born on Sep. 27, 1956 in Croix-des-Missions, which is part of Tabarre, and, during his 2015-2016 presidential run as Renmen Ayiti’s candidate, had the third best-funded campaign – with the largest billboards and most flyers – after Jovenel Moïse and Jude Céléstin, the candidate of former President René Préval’s party. Nonetheless, he placed fifth with only .75% of the vote.
“I thank the President of the Republic President Jovenel Moïse for choosing me as his prime minister,” Céant wrote on his Facebook page on Aug. 5. “I’m aware of the dimensions of the task and the challenges which await me.”
Farah Juste, the reigning queen of Haitian protest song and long-time activist in the Lavalas Family party, summed up Céant’s prospects: “he dies in the film,” (li mouri nan fim nan) a Kreyòl catch-phrase meaning someone is doomed.
“For three reasons,” she continued. “First, the people despise him for the way he made money off of uprooting them from their homes in downtown Port-au-Prince under Martelly and [his Prime Minister Laurent] Lamothe. Second, the opposition doesn’t like him and doesn’t trust him. Thirdly, Jovenel would never let him run things, the same way Jovenel completely controlled Lafontant.”
Céant has to be approved by Parliament, which nominally is controlled by Moïse’s Haitian Bald-Headed Party (PHTK) and its allies. However, Moïse has been grievously politically wounded by the July uprising, causing some of his allies to take a distance. And historically, the president’s first nominees often are shot down in the confirmation process.
In fact, Juste wonders whether Céant isn’t just “cannon fodder.”
“My sources tell me that Céant is not really the man that Jovenel wants,” she concluded. “The real person he wants will come after Céant.”
Asked who that person is, she replied: “I really don’t know.”
Youri Latortue is one of Haiti’s most powerful politicians.
As an outspoken Senator, he is an ally of Haitian President Michel Martelly. Both are leading advocates for reestablishing the demobilized Haitian Army. He supported Martelly’s nominee for Prime Minister, neoliberal businessman Daniel-Gérard Rouzier, who was rejected by the Parliament in a Jun. 21 vote.
But Youri Latortue is also a drug-trafficker, gang godfather, and death-squad leader, according to the testimony and reports of many colleagues, crime witnesses and government officials, both Haitian and international.
In fact, “Senator Youri Latortue may well be the most brazenly corrupt of leading Haitian politicians,” according to the U.S. Embassy. Secret U.S. State Department cables obtained by the media organization WikiLeaks and reviewed by Haïti Liberté paint a portrait of a relentlessly unscrupulous, ambitious strongman, who has helped bring down Haitian governments and holds Gonaïves, Haiti’s fourth largest city, as his personal fiefdom.
His Rise to Power
Born in Gonaïves, Youri Latortue went to law school in Port-au-Prince and then graduated from Haiti’s military academy in 1990. He became a lieutenant in the Haitian Armed Forces (FAdH), teaching briefly at the Military Academy. But after the Sep. 30, 1991 coup d’état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Latortue joined the Army’s notorious Anti-Gang Unit (previously called Criminal Research) headed by Col. Michel François, one of the coup’s principal leaders.
“It was widely known that he was involved in many of the political killings carried out during the 1991-94 coup, in particular the shooting of Father Jean-Marie Vincent in August 2004,” explained a once highly-placed government security source who wishes to remain anonymous. “He was one of Michel François’ death-squad leaders.”
In 2004, a delegation of the Center for the Study of Human Rights wrote that “a former high-ranking police official from the USGPN (palace security), Edouard Guerrière… claims that Youri Latortue participated in the 1994 murder of Catholic priest Jean-Marie Vincent (as did eyewitnesses in 1995), and that he assisted in the 1993 murder of democracy activist Antoine Izméry.”
“Youri Latortue participated in the 1994 murder of Catholic priest Jean-Marie Vincent,” (pictured above) wrote the Center for the Study of Human Rights.
In 2005, a U.S. policeman with the United Nations Police (UNPOL) videotaped an interview that he made with a young woman who feared for her life “because the 28th of August 1994, I witnessed Youri Latortue murder the priest by the name of Jean-Marie Vincent,” she said. The video, released in October 2010 by the Haiti Information Project (HIP), is now available on YouTube.
She describes how the priest drove up to his gate that night. “That’s when I saw… a double white pickup with a bunch of men in black,” she continued. “I saw Youri… I [didn’t recognize] the other ones. But the reason why I remember Youri [was] because he used to come to [name removed] house. And I saw him getting out of the [pick-up]and shooting at the car. But at that time, I didn’t know [the victim] was a priest… I didn’t know the person who was in that car.” It was only later that she learned who it was (see Haïti Liberté, Vol.4, No.14, 10/20/2010).
The video-taped interview was sent to HIP with the following note: “The UN has no interest in pursuing this case or revealing this evidence despite the statements of this eyewitness that Youri Latortue was the triggerman that shot and killed Father Jean-Marie Vincent on August 28, 1994…. It is a travesty of justice that the UN has been withholding this testimony from the public. They are supposed to be impartial but Latortue has powerful friends in the US Embassy who view him as an asset since his role following the ouster of Aristide in 2004.”
After Aristide returned to Haiti from exile on Oct. 15, 1994, he dissolved the FAdH in early 1995, and Latortue was transferred to the Interim Police force, made up of former FAdH soldiers. Dr. Fourel Célestin, a former FAdH colonel, was appointed as President Aristide’s security advisor, and he proposed bringing Youri Latortue into the Palace security under his aegis.
“Aristide was dead set against it, having heard the persistent rumors of Latortue’s murderous role during the coup,” the former government source said. “But Célestin convinced him, arguing that the Palace needed to have some of the Army bad guys if it was going to dismantle and neutralize the force.” Aristide relented.
In March 1995, unknown assassins shot to death well-known pro-coup spokeswoman Mireille Durocher-Bertin and another passenger in her car on the eve of President Bill Clinton’s visit to Haiti. The shooting was a tremendous embarrassment to the Aristide government and to Clinton. A team of FBI agents spent time in Haiti investigating the murder, and Youri Latortue was one of their suspects. Washington yanked Latortue’s U.S. travel visa.
Latortue worked out of Célestin’s Palace office until 1996 when President René Préval took power. Washington insisted that certain former FAdH officers deemed too close to Aristide – Célestin, Major Dany Toussaint, Major Joseph Médard – be removed from leadership of the new police and two new Palace Security details: the USP (Presidential Security Unit), similar to the U.S. Secret Service, and the USGPN (Security Unit to Guard the National Palace). When they were removed, that left a void in the Palace security’s command, a void that was filled by Latortue. He became the USGPN’s deputy chief under Frantz Jean-François. Two better trusted pro-Lavalas security agents – Nesly Lucien and Oriel Jean – were named to head the USP. That arrangement lasted throughout Préval’s term (despite his grave misgivings about Latortue, as we shall see) until he handed the Presidency back to Aristide in 2001.
Aristide Returns, Youri Takes Leave
“After Aristide’s accession, other USGPN policemen found [Latortue] ‘hostile’ to his new President, who worried about his involvement in a ‘plot,’ according to Haiti’s elite-owned radio station Signal FM on February 21, 2001,” Canadian investigative journalist Anthony Fenton wrote in a June 2005 Znet article entitled “Have the Latortues Kidnapped Democracy in Haiti?”.
At that point, Latortue was transferred out of the Palace to work under Nesly Lucien, who had been named Police Chief. But in late 2001, Latortue took a paid leave of absence from the police to pursue a master’s degree in law in Canada. He “had lived in Miami, [and] studied in Montreal for two years” he told Fenton in a June 2005 phone interview.
Perennial right-wing operative Stanley Lucas worked closely with Youri Latortue during the 2004 coup d’état against Aristide.
It was during that time that Latortue was paid a visit by Stanley Lucas, an operative for the International Republican Institute (IRI), a tentacle of the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), according to our security source. IRI was playing a central role in organizing the “civilian opposition” to Aristide, principally the so-called “Group of 184,” headed by sweatshop magnate Andy Apaid. But Lucas was also keeping touch with the “armed opposition” of former Haitian soldier and police chief Guy Philippe in the Dominican Republic. This is where Youri came in.
During 2002 and 2003, Latortue shuttled back and forth between the U.S., Canada, and the Dominican Republic, meeting with Guy Philippe, former FRAPH death-squad leader Jodel Chamblain, and others in the “rebel” force forming, training, and launching raids into Haiti. Interestingly, Youri’s U.S. travel visa, which had been suspended in 1995, was reinstated in 2002 when he started to play this role of anti-Aristide intermediary.
“We know that Youri was one of the intellectual authors, one of the key planners, behind the Dec. 17, 2001 attack on the National Palace,” when a band of Philippe’s “rebels” briefly took over the National Palace during a failed coup attempt, our well-placed source explained. “In the investigation after the attack, we learned that it was Youri’s people – his proteges – in the USGPN who, working inside the Palace, let the attackers into the Palace grounds.”
Finally Latortue, Philippe, Lucas, IRI, and the 184 were successful in their destabilization campaign after a U.S. SEAL team kidnapped Aristide from his home on Feb. 29, 2004, completing the second coup against him.
After the 2004 Coup
Youri Latortue then flew back to Haiti with his first cousin once-removed, Gérard Latortue in tow. A few weeks later, Gérard Latortue was installed as de facto Prime Minister. Youri Latortue, often called Gérard’s “nephew,” was appointed as his security and spy chief, with the title “Responsible for National Intelligence to the Primature.”
“The thing was that Gérard had been working for international organizations overseas most of his life and didn’t really know the lay of the land in Haiti,” our security source explained. “He had to rely largely on Youri for guidance. In that sense, Youri was practically the shadow Prime Minister. And during that coup, he was the main one responsible for the massacre of many militants in Belair, Cité Soleil and other pockets of resistance.”
In his post, Latortue was “nicknamed ‘Mister 30 Per Cent’ because of the percentage he demands in return for favors,” wrote Thierry Oberlin in the December 21, 2004 Le Figaro. “Worried, not without reason, about his own security, the prime minister pays 20,000 euros a month to this former police officer implicated in various scandals for ‘organizing an intelligence service’.”
But then something interesting happened. In late 2004, Gérard Latortue left Haiti to travel to a conference in Canada, passing through Miami. Youri was part of his delegation. But in Florida, U.S. agents detained Youri for his suspected involvement in drug-trafficking. (Joel Deeb, a Haitian-American arms dealer who reportedly brokered deals with Youri Latortue, “stated that Youri Latortue presently has four sealed DEA indictments pending against him, and that the DEA [has] issued an extradition letter for Youri Latortue to the interim government,” Fenton learned in several interviews with Deeb between April and June 2005. “Youri Latortue himself evaded questions about the DEA indictments, denying that he and Deeb, as Deeb claims, were in regular contact.”)
Youri Latortue had four sealed DEA indictments pending against him, and the DEA had issued an extradition letter to Gérard Latortue’s government.
Gérard Latortue got on the phone to officials in Washington and demanded that Youri be released. Eventually, U.S. officials said they would not hold Youri, but on the condition that he take the next flight back to Haiti, which he did.
“When Gérard returned to Haiti after the Canada visit, he met with Youri about the incident and about his vulnerability to prosecution,” our source explains. “They determined that the best course of action was for Youri to become an elected official, which would confer upon him immunity from prosecution. That is why and how Youri’s political career began, assured by Gérard, under whom his election was assured.”
Thus, under his “uncle’s” government, Youri was elected to a six-year term as the first senator of the Artibonite Department in the Feb. 7, 2006 elections that also brought Préval to the Presidency for the second time.
This is where the U.S. Embassy cables pick up the thread.
