A FORMER TOP HAITIAN COP TELLS OF DRUGS AND MURDER PLOTS

The heavily armed, hooded men riding in two cars that followed Mario
Andresol through the streets of Port-au-Prince one day last summer twice
raised their weapons to shoot, according to Mr. Andresol. Only superior
maneuvering by his driver thwarted them. When his car was finally cornered
at a gas station he got out. It was then that he recognized one of the
perpetrators as a fellow police officer and called him by name. The man
removed his mask and implored Mr. Andresol to lie down, explaining that if
he did not he would be gunned down.

Mr. Andresol, the former central director of the Haitian Judiciary Police,
would not seem to be a man easily intimidated. Between 1998 and 2001, he
commanded five special units, including the anti-drug bureau and the bureau
of criminal affairs. It was a precarious world of tracking kidnappers,
stolen-car rings, and drug traffickers inside one of the most notorious
gangster havens in the Western Hemisphere.

He was also investigating political murders. The Los Angeles Times
reported, in August 2001, that Mr. Andresol was "probably the closest thing
the Haitian National Police ever had to a supercop." Noting that he had
"won the praise of law-enforcement officials from Washington to Buenos
Aires," it also said that he had "seemed a rare Haitian hybrid of Frank
Serpico and Eliot Ness."

Yet one force managed to send the 41-year-old former army captain into
hiding, his own government. Last month he sent a letter to Cesar Gaviria,
the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, with the
following allegations: "Today the friends of those whom my task forced me
to pursue are: Secretary of State, senators, high officials in the
Administration, high-ranking police officials, superintendents or officers.
They emerged or came out from the dark, thanks to the return to power of
President Aristide on February 7, 2001,"

Investigating the truth behind the Andresol allegations would seem to be
useful work for the OAS, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency. Yet so far it and similar stories of Aristide-induced
terror from judges and journalists fleeing Haiti have received little
official attention. The international community has frozen development aid
to Haiti until Mr. Aristide commits to democratic behavior but it still
seems to think that it can reason with the Haitian strongman. The OAS sent
its 24th mission in two years to Haiti on Monday for more negotiations.

Witnesses with the type of experience Mr. Andresol has might also be able
to help the U.S. better understand why there has been so little progress in
combating drug trafficking in Haiti. In April, New York Police Commissioner
Ray Kelly went to Port-au-Prince as part of a panel of experts that was
supposed to advise Haitian authorities on counter-narcotics work and try to
attract international funds to their efforts. The trip was arranged by Ira
Kurzban, an American attorney who represents Haiti in the U.S. Mr. Kelly,
who was a part of a U.S. contingent working in Haiti in 1995 to build the
Haitian National Police, says he did not see any improvements in Haiti's
anti-drug work. Mr. Andresol seems to be saying that the problem can be
explained by looking at how Haitian law enforcement is stymied by Mr.
Aristide himself.

In his letter to the OAS Mr. Andresol alleges that because he pursued the
rule of law without respect to political power, the Aristide government
tried to kill him. When the plan went awry that day in the streets of
Port-au-Prince, the government detained him for 25 days. Having been
released "illegally, without a single order, no order of liberation, no
paper whatsoever, like a prisoner who was being helped to escape," he is
now in hiding. The OAS says it has "forwarded [the letter] to the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for a close review." The Haitian
embassy in Washington says it has not seen it. The full letter is available
on the Haiti Democracy Project Web site.

Mr. Andresol maintains that he dedicated himself to the rule of law in his
work. "Convinced that I was working for the good of the country and for the
Police Institution, I never wavered from the objective I set for myself,
despite the threats, the intimidations and the attempts against my life."
In his letter, he details some of the successes he had confiscating cocaine
shipments, uncovering money laundering transfers and nabbing criminals.
Many of those arrested, he says, were "freed without being tried or
condemned, as required by Haitian law."

Mr. Andresol theorizes that his many refusals to accommodate the Aristide
network eventually made him a target of the government. In his letter he
says that shortly after the February 2001 inauguration of Mr. Aristide, he
received a new appointment to the General Direction of the Police. But he
was instructed not to report to work. In May, he says, he was told of a
plan by "individuals linked to the police" to kill him. He wrote a letter
to the director of the Judiciary Police asking for help but got no reply.

Then on July 28, 2001 a band of men wearing army gear stormed the
Petionville police academy. The Aristide government charged that they were
coup plotters. Aristide critics maintain that the government orchestrated
the assault so that it could crack down on the opposition. On July 31, 2001
Mr. Andresol says he was invited "to a meeting with the investigating
commission on the events of July 28, 2001" held at the Ministry of Justice.
After the meeting the president of the commission promised to call on him
for "future consultations." It was when he went outside, according to his
letter, that he encountered the hooded men who chased his car through the
streets of Port-au-Prince.

Mr. Andresol says, "People involved in drug trafficking are working with
Aristide. If you arrest one of them, the whole country is shaken because
you've arrested the president's man." He also alleges that "people I have
arrested for drug trafficking and crime were promoted in the police
department."

Allegations of this sort could, of course, be merely the rants of a man who
had a falling out with the system, and might not be worth taking seriously
if they were from someone other than a former high police official in
Haiti. But coming from such a source, they would seem to deserve more
attention than they have so far received from U.S. officialdom. Rather than
continue the charade of "negotiations" with Mr. Aristide, perhaps someone
in the U.S. should talk to Mr. Andresol and try to determine whether his
story is true.