Moise murder suspect to be sent to Colombia
Jamaica is again moving to enforce the court-ordered deportation of ex-Colombian army officer Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios, a key suspect in the July assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, to his homeland.
This development comes despite a request by Haiti, through diplomatic channels, to have Palacios turned over to authorities there, according to a document seen by The Sunday Gleaner.
Palacios remained in local police custody up to yesterday, almost one month after he was fined $8,000 or five days in prison by a Parish Court judge who also ordered his deportation for illegally entering the island.
Plans for what was expected to be a routine deportation were, however, scuttled after the high-profile target in one of the hemisphere’s most notorious modern murders became the subject of a Red Notice issued by the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol), sources told The Gleaner at the time.
But Jamaica’s Deputy Police Commissioner Fitz Bailey confirmed on Thursday that the “administrative process” surrounding Palacios’ deportation is now in train.
That process includes obtaining travel and other official documents for the ex-Colombian army officer, Bailey explained.
“That process is going on,” he said.
Days after the October 15 court order for Palacios’ deportation, Haiti’s Foreign Ministry dispatched a letter to Jamaica’s Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith requesting that the Colombian be handed over to Haitian authorities, according to documents seen by The Sunday Gleaner.
In the aftermath of Moise’s July 7 assassination, Haitian police arrested 20 persons, including 18 Colombians and two Haitian Americans. They were suspected of being among the 28 commandos who stormed the late president’s private residence in the hills overlooking the Port-au-Prince capital, killing him and wounding his wife, Martine.
Three suspects were reportedly killed, while five, including Palacios, were on the run.
Palacios was arrested at a guest house in central Jamaica in October, the police have confirmed.
It is believed that he entered the country through one of the island’s more than 140 informal ports of entry.
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti Welcomes Brian Concannon as Returning Executive Director
Boston, MA (November 10, 2021)—On Monday, the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) welcomed Brian Concannon Esq., IJDH’s founder, as its returning Executive Director. Concannon succeeds Franciscka Lucien, who previously informed the Board of her decision to step down from leadership of IJDH as of November 5.
Concannon originally served IJDH as Executive Director for fifteen years before stepping down in November 2019. He is a lawyer and activist who has dedicated his career to advancing human rights in Haiti. He lived in Haiti from 1995 to 2004, where he co-managed the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), a public interest law firm and IJDH’s sister organization, and served as a UN Human Rights Officer. He left Haiti in 2004 after the US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew Haiti’s democracy and demonstrated that no progress in Haiti was sustainable unless the US and other powerful countries were compelled to respect the country’s sovereignty and democracy. From 2019 to 2021, Brian served as the Executive Director of Project Blueprint, where he led the effort to promote a progressive, human rights-based US foreign policy by bringing the perspectives of people impacted by US actions abroad into policy discussions.
“I appreciate all of Franciscka’s hard and skilful work as Executive Director. I look forward to rejoining the entire IJDH community—colleagues at the Institute and at BAI, collaborators throughout the world, and IJDH’s wonderful financial supporters—to continue this work fighting the root causes of instability and injustice in Haiti.”
About IJDH: The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) is a US-based human rights non-profit organization. Established in 2004, it is a partnership of human rights advocates in Haiti and the US, dedicated to tackling the root causes of injustice that impact basic human rights in Haiti. In partnership with its Haiti-based sister organization, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), IJDH advocates, litigates, builds constituencies, and nurtures networks to create systemic pathways to justice for marginalized communities in Haiti. For more information about IJDH, please visit www.ijdh.org.
Contact:
Catherine Chang, Operations Coordinator
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
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Miami Herald: U.S. Warns Americans to Leave Haiti as Security Crisis Deepens, Hostages Remain Captive
The Miami Herald.com
Jacqueline Charles
Haitians say the current crisis is the worst to hit the country since the 1990s, when the international community and Clinton administration maintained economic sanctions after a Sept. 29, 1991, military coup toppled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The Biden administration is urging U.S. citizens in Haiti “to strongly consider returning to the United States” amid a gang-aggravated fuel shortage and a deteriorating security climate in which 17 Christian missionaries, including 16 Americans, have been held hostage for more than three weeks.
The message in a Friday security alert from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince came as Haiti’s commercial banks and other businesses announced reduced hours starting this week, grocery store owners warned of coming food shortages and the United Nations encouraged employees to stock up on emergency supplies of water, food and other essential items.
Americans in the country are being encouraged to depart while commercial flights are still available, noting that while the security situation has been unpredictable for months, the environment has deteriorated rapidly in recent days.
“It sounds like an abdication of any kind of responsibility,” Robert Maguire, a longtime Haiti expert who once prepared U.S. diplomats being sent to Port-au-Prince, said of the responses of the U.S. and the U.N. to the unfolding crisis, which is expected to get worse this week if authorities don’t manage to supply fuel. “I think this administration would prefer for Haiti to go away. But it’s not going to go away. It seems that there is no real unanimity of what to do in this administration.”
Rice University names school Provost Reginald DesRoches as next president
HOUSTON — Rice University’s board of trustees has selected Reginald DesRoches, who is now serving as school provost, to be the university’s next president.
DesRoches, born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is the first immigrant, first Black man and first engineer to lead the private research university. An internationally recognized structural engineer and earthquake resilience expert, DesRoches will succeed President David Leebron, who previously announced his plan to step down next summer after the academic year ends.
“I am deeply honored to be named the next president of Rice University,” DesRoches said in a written statement. “The past 4½ years at Rice have been among the most rewarding in my professional career and I look forward to building on the tradition of excellence established by President Leebron and those who served before him.”
At Rice, 7% of students are Black or African American.
DesRoches arrived at Rice in 2017 as dean of engineering at the George R. Brown School of Engineering. During DesRoches’ time as dean, the department underwent significant growth in research programs, including new efforts in the areas of neuroengineering and synthetic biology. He also led the establishment of the school’s first-of-its-kind collaborative research center in India with the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
Before joining Rice, DesRoches was chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. His work there stemmed from his studies at the University of California, Berkeley. As an undergraduate student, DesRoches witnessed the damage wrought by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. That experience led him to focus on earthquake resiliency as he pursued his master’s and doctoral degrees at Berkeley.
Fuel crisis
American Airlines cuts flights to Haiti
Port-au-Prince, November 12, 2021. The current situation in Haiti is not without consequences for the functioning of national and international institutions.
American Airlines announced the reduction of its flights to Haiti. This decision will be effective from Monday, November 15, 2021, according to the company’s spokesperson, Laura Masvidal, during an interview with the Miami Herald.
Starting on that date, there will be only one flight per day to Haiti, from Miami to Port-au-Prince, Masvidal told the newspaper.
Who are the U.S. drug informants caught up in the Haiti assassination?
At least two DEA informants are under arrest or are implicated in the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise. What is known about their alleged participation in the plot and does the DEA bear any responsibility?
On May 1, 2000, a wealthy Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar was stopped by United States Customs agents while he was driving in South Florida.
Agents searched his rental car and seized a large amount of U.S. currency. But the agents did not arrest or charge Jaar with any crime, despite the fact that he was under investigation for alleged money laundering, according to court documents.
Jaar, the owner of an import and export business in Haiti, would go on to be one of Haiti’s most prolific drug traffickers, helping smuggle at least seven tons of Colombian cocaine into the country, destined mostly for the United States between 1998 and 2012, according to court records. He went by the alias ‘Whiskey’ according to his 2013 indictment.
To save his skin, he became a U.S. government informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA, though he eventually landed in jail in 2013, pleading guilty to stealing 50 kilos of the cocaine he was supposed to be helping agents seize, worth around $1 million.
After his release from jail in 2016, Jaar returned to Haiti where his name has surfaced as one of the suspects in the plot to assassinate Haitian president, Jovenel Moise, gunned down in his bedroom on July 7.
A month earlier, Jaar allegedly attended a bizarre meeting in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where a plan was discussed, with supposed U.S. government backing, to detain 34 Haitian businessmen and government officials involved in drug trafficking and money laundering, using Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
U.S. officials deny any such plan existed and Haitian police say the nine participants were actually involved in the plot to kill the president. Most are in detention, except for Jaar who is a fugitive and two other Haitians, a justice ministry official who was fired this year for corruption and a former senator.
“There is absolutely no truth to the allegations that the Department of State, FBI, DEA or any other U.S. Government entity was involved in this plot,” a State Department spokesperson told Univision late Friday.
It remains unclear what Jaar’s role was in the meeting, what was actually discussed and whether it had anything to do with assassination of Moise. It is also unknown if Jaar was still working as a DEA informant after he returned to Haiti. The DEA declined to comment about his status in response to several requests from Univision.
“If he was informing the U.S. government of the plot to kill the Haitian president we have a solemn obligation even with criminals to inform the target of that plot. The President of Haiti would have been notified. We could not have let something like that pass,” said Mike Vigil, former chief of DEA for the Caribbean.
The DEA has previously acknowledged that one of the other participants now in detention was working as a “confidential source.” The DEA did not name the person but said that following the assassination the informant reached out to his contacts at the DEA and later surrendered to local authorities, along with one other.
The DEA has also strongly denied any involvement in the assassination during which some assassins yelled "DEA" during the attack on the president's residence. “These individuals were not acting on behalf of DEA,” it said.
Experts from the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are now working with Haitian authorities to try and solve the murder which has baffled Haitians and outside observers for almost a month, threatening to further destabilize the impoverished Caribbean nation of 11 million.
The meeting attended by Jaar could hold vital clues and has important links with other elements in the plot. It’s timing coincided with the arrival in Haiti of a group of former Colombian soldiers who are also in detention suspected of participating in the killing.
Two of the participants in the meeting, both Haitian-Americans, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, have alleged confessed to working with the Colombians, supposedly as translators. It is widely believed that one of them, Vincent, is the unidentified DEA informant. Few details have emerged about Vincent's life in the United States. The Miami Herald reported that Vincent, 55, became a DEA informant after being arrested more than 20 years ago for filing false information on a U.S. passport application.
A lot more is known about Jaar, the 49-year-old black sheep of an otherwise reputable family at the top of the country’s business elite. Palestinian emigres from Bethlehem, the Jaar family own the Coca-Cola bottling license in Haiti as well as a brewery in Canada and investments in electricity. But they are largely estranged from Rodolphe who has a reputation as a big spender who mysteriously disappeared from Haiti for long periods.
His participation in the June 8 meeting was described in a letter delivered to prosecutors by a lawyer for one of the detained men, Reynaldo Corvington, the owner of a security company who hosted the gathering.
According to the letter by Corvington’s attorney, Samuel Madistin, the 6pm meeting was requested by Joseph Felix Badio, a former Justice Ministry official who was fired in May from an anti-corruption unit for “serious breaches” of ethical rules.
Madistin told Univision in a phone interview that Badio worked as a consultant for Corvington’s firm, Corvington Courier & Security Service, which has held several U.S. government contracts in the 1990s, including providing guards for the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.
Badio and Corvington have known eachother for 20 years when Badio worked for an anti-drug unit in the Justice Ministry and Corvington’s firm had a security contract for a government warehouse were seized drugs were held.
Badio had called Corvington earlier in the day to say that “an FBI officer and a DEA official wished to meet with him and asked him if he could receive them at his home,” according to Madistin’s letter.
Badio showed up with a former senator John Joel Joseph as well as a Colombian man who spoke only Spanish. Jaar arrived a few minutes later, but the 49-year-old businessman never spoke during the meeting. “I don’t know why he was there,” said Madistin.
The meeting wound up after about one hour. Corvington was unimpressed by Badio’s presentation of the supposed anti-money laundering and drug trafficking operation, according to Madistin.
“It was all fake. It wasn’t FBI or DEA at all at the meeting. It was the ones implicated in the plot, and the Colombian, who were there,” said Madistin.
Madistin said he expected his client would soon be released as “he had nothing to do with the assassination. Nothing at all.”
What happened over the next four weeks is a mystery. On the night of July 7 armed men entered the president’s residence, with almost no resistance from Moise’s 40-men security team.
According his wife, First Lady Martine Moise, none of the assassins spoke Creole or French, she has said. The men spoke only Spanish and communicated with someone on the phone as they searched the room. They appeared to find what they wanted on a shelf where her husband kept his files, she told The New York Times.
“They were looking for something in the room, and they found it,” she said. She said she did not know what it was.
There remain more questions than answers, both for Haitian authorities and the United States.
“Who has the US, and the DEA specifically, been working with in Haiti? To what end?” asked Jake Johnson, a Haiti expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
“Have those relationships compromised the agency’s ability to do its job and actually undermined security and stability in Haiti?” he asked. “More directly, given previous investigations and arrests, what evidence of high-level government and private sector corruption or criminality does the US possess? And could that be, in any way, related to the assassination of the president?" he added.
Jaar “was a very high-profile (U.S. government) informant,” said Vigil.
It’s likely that Jaar’s role as a DEA informant ended in 2016 after he left jail, as by then he had been exposed in court, and the media, as having, as one judge put it “a checkered history”, of double dealing with traffickers and the DEA.
“He has too much garbage, too much baggage by then,” said Albert Levin, a Miami attorney who represented a Haitian police commander, Claude Thelemaque, who helped provide security for Jaar’s drug shipments.
A fluent English speaker with a degree in business administration, Jaar, was considered by DEA to be a valuable “snitch” as he helped authorities disrupt the longstanding cocaine connection between Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti. Jaar would pay off local cops to protect the cocaine loads flown in on planes that landed at night on dirt strips protected by local police who guided the pilots by radio, according to court records.
Thelemaque was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in jail in 2016 for his role in a 425-kilo shipment of cocaine coordinated by Jaar, who stole 50 kilos from the shipment behind the DEA’s back.
“In this case you have a situation where a man was presumably cooperating and at the same time double dealing; in essence working both sides of the fence,” said Levin.
Jaar was facing life in prison but because he was a DEA informant he received a prison sentence of less than four years. Jaar’s lawyer, Richard Dansoh, did not answer several requests for comment.
At his sentencing in 2014, Jaar asked the judge for forgiveness. “Your Honor, I have accepted full responsibility from the beginning, and I have cooperated with the government,” he said.
“I admit I made a big mistake, in my cooperation. I can assure you that I will never make this mistake again,” he added.
Thelemaque is still is jail and is not due to be released until May 22, 2023, according to federal prison records.
Jaar’s lawyer at the time, Richard Dansoh, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two years later, at Thelemaque’s trial, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Judge Williams expressed her own disquiet. “Jaar got a huge break here, and it has to be acknowledged,” she told the court.
“Mr. Jaar was the leader of the band and Mr. Jaar was the one who had all the pieces on the chess board,” the judge told the court at Thelemaque's sentening.
His double dealing “so fatally impaired” his credibility that prosecutors decided not to have him testify against Thelemaque at trial, Williams noted, according to the 2016 trial transcript.
Jaar also helped convict a Haitian policeman and his codefendant Olgaire Francois, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in the same kilo shipment.
“I was shocked to learn that Mr Jaar was given rewards notwithstanding the fact that it had been discovered that he had been a double agent and had actually stolen part of the cocaine that he was working with the DEA to have seized,” Francois’ lawyer, Curt Obront, told Univision.
“You can only make so many deals with the devil,” said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who handled several Haitian drug cases.
“After a while you have stop making those deals and use another way to go after the big fish,” he added.
Correction: A previous version of this story erroneosly quoted Claude Thelemaque's lawyer, Albert Levin, as saying that his client was recruited by Rodolphe Jaar. It was the prosecutors who said Thelemaque was recuited by Jaar. Levin says his client was innocent and never participated in the drug shipment.