Junta leaders may face US drugs charges

THE United States may seek the indictment of senior Haitian military commanders for involvement with cocaine smuggling in a repeat of its actions against General Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama, now in prison in the US.

Some 50 tons of Colombian cocaine worth between dollars 200m and dollars 300m (pounds 135 to pounds 200m) in profits is going through Haiti to the US each year, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Lieutenant-Colonel Michel Francois, the chief of the Port-au-Prince police, is said by witnesses to be the officer in control of the traffic. There is less direct evidence linking General Raoul Cedras, the army commander, with the drugs trade but he is assumed by US investigators to have reached an arrangement with Colonel Francois.

A Democratic congressional assistant specialising in the drugs trade warned yesterday that the indictment of specific military officers might be weeks way. But a memorandum prepared by the office of Senator John Kerry, who chairs the sub-committee on terrorism and narcotics, says: 'We have specific witnesses, living in south Florida, who have told us that the Haitian military has been continuing to protect drug deals and that they believe the highest levels of the Haitian military, including Francois, are involved.'

Ever since the military siezed power in a coup from President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, efforts to suppress the drug trade through the island have all but vanished. Foreign missionaries in towns on the south coast of Haiti confirmed to the Independent that local military officers were carrying new weapons and driving expensive cars paid for by the profits generated by drugs.

The Colombian who allegedly controls the drugs trade in Haiti is Fernando Burgos Martinez, who lives in the wealthy town of Petionville overlooking the capital. The narcotics sub-committee says it has a witness who, after being arrested in Haiti by the police after a marijuana drop, had to make a pay-off of dollars 20,000 to Mr Martinez. The drugs smuggler and his pilots were immediately released.

The indictment of Colonel Francois for involvement in smuggling drugs to the US is unlikely to lead to an invasion, as in Panama in 1989. But it is likely, however, to increase public hostility towards the military regime and commit President Bill Clinton to its overthrow. During his brief period in power President Aristide gave priority to trying to stop drug trafficking.

The Colombian cartel has long used Haiti as a staging-post for drugs before they are sent on to Florida. An indictment would come through the US Attorney in Miami, probably in consultation with the Justice Department in Washington. So long as the military is in power the Drug Enforcement Administration has despaired of any action against the Colombians in Haiti.