Saturday, March 8, 1997

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.