Randall Robinson, founder of influential Africa lobby, dies at 81
The founding executive director of TransAfrica was for years the foremost U.S. activist representing Africans and the African diaspora
Randall Robinson, who as founding executive director of TransAfrica, a high-profile lobbying organization in Washington, helped reshape U.S. foreign policy toward apartheid-era South Africa and once conducted a 27-day hunger strike to bring attention to the suffering of Haitian refugees, died March 24 in St. Kitts, the island in the West Indies. He was 81.
His wife, Hazel Ross-Robinson, said he died in a hospital of aspiration pneumonia.
Mr. Robinson grew up in what he described as the “domestic apartheid system” of the Jim Crow South, recalling that he had not a single White classmate until he was accepted at Harvard Law School.
He participated in the civil rights movement and, in the years that followed, sought to carry on its ideals as perhaps the foremost U.S. activist representing Africans and the African diaspora.
Mr. Robinson led TransAfrica, which also included a scholarly and educational affiliate known as TransAfrica Forum, from its incorporation in 1977 until he stepped down as executive director in 2001. TransAfrica ceased operations in 2014.
A member of Congress, he recalled, once remarked to him that before TransAfrica was founded, “there weren’t more than a few people on the Hill who could name more than three African countries.” Under Mr. Robinson’s leadership, TransAfrica became “black America’s premier foreign-policy think tank,” Washington Post columnist William Raspberry wrote in 1993.
TransAfrica had the backing of Black celebrities including singer Harry Belafonte, tennis player Arthur Ashe, actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, comedians Bill Cosby and Dick Gregory, and boxer Muhammad Ali.
The organization — and Mr. Robinson in particular — was widely credited with forcing the United States to confront the apartheid regime in South Africa and push for the release of South African activists including Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years under apartheid.
“If I had to identify one person” in the United States “responsible for ending apartheid, it would be Randall,” then-U.S. Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) told the Boston Globe.
In November 1984, Mr. Robinson was arrested, along with Del. Walter E. Fauntroy and Mary Frances Berry of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, when they staged a sit-in at the South African Embassy in Washington.
Mr. Robinson went on to lead daily demonstrations outside the embassy that led to thousands of arrests, including those of Ashe, singer Stevie Wonder, feminist leader Gloria Steinem and Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., the liberal Republican from Connecticut. Mr. Robinson was detained a total of seven times.
President Ronald Reagan had advocated a conciliatory policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa. But in September 1986, amid growing outrage among Americans over the brutality of apartheid, Congress voted to override Reagan’s veto of legislation that placed economic sanctions on South Africa.
Mandela was released in 1990 and, four years later, was elected South Africa’s first Black president. Mr. Robinson was unable to attend the inauguration, because he had only days earlier ended a nearly month-long hunger strike to draw attention to another plight: that of thousands of refugees fleeing the military junta that had ousted the democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
“Lives were at stake,” Mr. Robinson told the Dallas Morning News at the time. “Where life is at stake, one ought to be prepared to do anything to save a life. … If there are not some principles you have that are worth dying for, then your life is not worth living.”
Mr. Robinson took only water and fruit juice during his protest, which attracted national attention. At one point he was hospitalized for severe dehydration. He ended his hunger strike after President Bill Clinton agreed to grant would-be refugees asylum hearings rather than interdicting them at sea and returning them immediately to their violence-wracked country.
Clinton said that his administration had begun reviewing its position on Haitian refugees before Mr. Robinson undertook his protest. But the president had also remarked during the fast that “I understand and respect what he’s doing. … We need to change our policy.”
Randall Maurice Robinson was born in Richmond on July 6, 1941. His father was a high school history teacher and athletic coach, and his mother, a former elementary school teacher, was a homemaker and volunteer.
His earliest memories included the indignities inflicted on people of color because of segregation — the separate drinking fountains and bathrooms, the department store clerk who forced his mother to wear a skullcap before she tried on a hat. He recalled delivering groceries at age 14 to a White family and feeling invisible as they spoke among themselves about intimate details of their life, without any sense of his presence.
“When one gets on a bus and has to sit in the back — even a 2-year-old child understands,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1987. “Life is always a mixed blessing of pain and pleasure, but there was too much pain and no justification.”
Haiti assassination: how much did the US government know about the plot against Moïse?
The alleged involvement of three US government informants in the operation that culminated in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse has raised questions about how much Washington knew about the plan partially hatched in Miami. Does the FBI have a conflict of interest if it is investigating a case involving one of its informants? (Leer en español)
US Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen speaks during a press conference in Miami on February 14, 2023 to announce the arrest of four suspects and the indictment of 11 people accused of conspiring to assassinate the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise. Among those named as "planners" were Arcangel Pretel and Antonio Intriago, owners of a security firm, CTU Federal Academy.
In April 2021, the owners of a small South Florida security company met to discuss acquiring weapons and military equipment as part of a plan to remove Haiti’s President, Jovenel Moise.
Over the course of several meetings, the security company claimed to have ties to the FBI and the Justice Department and suggested that the United States government backed its plan to remove Moise.
At least one such meeting was attended by FBI agents who claimed that the security firm "attempted to draw FBI personnel ... into a discussion about regime change in Haiti."
U.S. officials confirmed last month in court documents that the meetings took place, but denied that anyone in the government “sanctioned” the plot to remove Moise, which resulted in his murder three months later.
Left unaddressed, however, were questions about what the FBI agents learned about the plot and whether they tried to stop it, or if they warned anyone in more senior ranks of government, or the U.S. intelligence services.
Miami area security company hired the alleged Colombian assassins
According to court documents, the Colombians were hired by CTU Federal Academy in Miami, the same firm that hosted the meetings with the FBI agents in Doral, Florida a few weeks earlier.
Several of the alleged conspirators, including the owners of CTU Federal Academy, Antonio Intriago and Arcangel Pretel, were arrested last month and accused in federal court with conspiracy to murder Moise. They face life sentences if found guilty.
At the time of the meetings in Doral, Pretel was also an active FBI informant, according to court documents, including an affidavit by one of the FBI agents investigating the plot. Pretel, a Colombian citizen who moved to Miami in 2015, was “deactivated” after the assassination, court documents revealed.
Two other jailed men accused in the plot, a Haitian-American former policemen, Joseph Vincent, and a convicted former drug trafficker, Rodolph Jaar, were also former DEA informants, though they were not active at the time of Moise’s murder, according to court documents.
The Colombians feel duped by CTU
A lawyer for the Colombian soldiers told Univision that the former Colombian soldiers acted under the belief that the plot was sanctioned by the U.S. government and were tricked by CTU.
"They were absolutely convinced that they were working for part of the U.S. government; I don't know if it was the FBI or the CIA or the DEA," said attorney Sondra McCollins, who represents several of the detained men. "They were told that they had to detain a very important person and that the 22 (Colombians) had to accompany them," she added.
The soldiers were recruited in Miami by CTU Federal Academy and flew to Haiti on tickets purchased by the company. Intriago traveled from Miami to meet with them and they received regular briefings by Pretel via Zoom.
The soldiers flew to Haiti on tickets purchased by CTU Federal Academy. Intriago traveled from Miami to meet with them and they received regular briefings by Pretel via Zoom, according to two sources who spoke to Univision.
How the plot evolved into an assassination
CTU's initial plan was to aid regime change, not assassination, according to court documents. But something changed between April and July. The night before the operation, all participants were informed that the mission was to kill the president, according to federal prosecutors in Miami.
On the night of the assassination, one of the men in the convoy that arrived at Moise's residence shouted through a megaphone that it was "a DEA operation," something the U.S. government has strongly denied.
"So they arrive at the house ... and they don't know how to get in ... and one of them leans on the gate and it opens. They don't even have to break anything down," McCollins said.
Three of the assailants found Moise and his wife in their bedroom. Their two children hid the bathroom with the family dog. Moise was shot 12 times and killed instantly; his wife was wounded but survived.
Supposedly, the plan was to install a new government and the Colombians were to be integrated as the new president's security team. But within hours all the Colombians were arrested, and the other conspirators - some Haitian politicians and a Supreme Court magistrate among them - disappeared.
As details of the judicial proceedings in Miami and Haiti emerge, disturbing questions have arisen about the role the U.S. played before, during and after the attack.
McCollins contends that most of the detainees thought that Pretel, who was identified by the prosecution as one of the masterminds of the operation, was an official U.S. government liaison.
"We were convinced that we were doing, that we were supporting legal work for the FBI and the State Department," Juan Carlos Yepes told Univision Noticias in a video sent from prison in Haiti.
In the Zoom meetings, Pretel dressed as a military officer and let people around him believe he was a former colonel in the military. It is unclear whether he ever served in the Colombian military. Univision could not find any record of his service.
According to the Colombian civil registry, the 50-year-old businessman was born in Cali. According to some of the relatives of the Colombian ex-soldiers detained in Haiti, Pretel worked closely with the military in Cali in the 1990s during the hunt for the leaders of the Cali drug cartel.
Pretel circulated photos of him in front of U.S. government offices. Univision obtained one photo of Pretel in front of an official-looking wall with the logos of several branches of the US military, including the Army, the Marine Corps, the US Navy and the Air Force.
It turns out that the wall is located in a public area of Miami International Airport, known as the ‘Wall of Honor’ memorial, listing the names of South Florida military men and women who died serving in the global war on terrorism.
Pretel, in fact, was no stranger to the U.S. government. In the FBI agent's affidavit, Pretel is describes as a "confidential source." But, the FBI alleges, the Colombian leader of the operation "may have tried to use" his prior relationship with the U.S. government to suggest to others that CTU was affiliated with the FBI or the Justice Department.
This was false, according to the government. The agent added that Pretel "did not disclose to the FBI" the plot to assassinate Moise.
What did the FBI know, and when?
But many questions remain.
For more than a year the FBI declined to comment on rumors about Pretel’s relationship with the agency, even after lawyers for CTU issued a press release described the April meetings with agents.
The FBI now admits that agents were present at a meeting in which the alleged conspirators discussed a plan in CTU's office to make political changes in Haiti. According to court documents, the FBI agents know that they should not meddle in the affairs of other countries.
According to court documents, the FBI agents told the security firm that they couldn't help. "An FBI agent told the men, in substance, that the FBI could not help them because Haiti had to solve its own problems," the affidavit stated.
What is not known is how much concern this type of meeting caused the agency. In court documents the FBI now admits that agents were present at a meeting in which the alleged conspirators discussed regime change in Haiti.
The FBI clarified that Pretel had been an informant "on matters unrelated" to Haiti. He is believed to have collaborated as an unidentified informant in a case in Colombia related to weapons destined for the FARC guerrillas, according to Colombian media.
What is not known is how much concern this type of meeting caused the agency.
US law and the 'Duty to Warn'
Under U.S. law, it is a crime to conspire “to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons” and damage property in a foreign country. Following numerous futile attempts by the CIA in the 1960s to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, “no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”
U.S. officials also have a ‘Duty to Warn' if they come across information of a plot to kill or otherwise harm a foreign head of state. It is not known in this case if that happened.
The FBI declined to comment on the case. The State Department did not immediately respond to a written request for comment on what it knew about the plot.
The Colombian former soldiers are also left wondering if they might have avoided being led into a trap if the FBI had intervened in time to halt the plot. Three of the Colombians died in the aftermath of the assault.
"Now we learn that FBI agents claim to have been deceived by that American security company. If they were fooled, what makes them think that we weren't fooled," Yepes said in the video sent to Univision.
International arrest warrant against Patrick Noramé
March 28, 2023
An international arrest warrant was issued on Monday against the former DG Office for the Monetization of Development Aid Programs, Patrick Noramé.
He is being prosecuted for corruption, money laundering, financing of terrorism, and embezzlement of public funds.
Twenty other personalities linked to the investigation conducted under the management of Mr. Noramé at the head of the BMPAD are also subject to measures prohibiting departure.