Posted 8:00 PM by John Adams |
Drugs and Politics

ABC News is the first to run this story:

The director of a Haitian police anti-drug task force was arrested after he had his men block off a stretch of highway in the capital to allow a Colombian plan carrying about a ton of cocaine to land, a police spokesman said on Friday.

Evans Brillant, director of the Anti-Drug Trafficking Brigade of the Haitian National Police, was arrested on suspicion of involvement in narco-trafficking on Thursday with five other policemen, police Inspector General Harvel told reporters.

"The men were arrested because they were involved in the landing of drugs into the country," he said.

Jean Baptiste said the six were accused of overseeing the landing last week of a Colombian airplane laden with 1,760 to 2,200 pounds of cocaine on Port-au-Prince's crime-ridden Route 9.

Police under Brillant's supervision allegedly set up roadblocks to stop cars and provided security to ensure the cocaine's delivery, Jean Baptiste said. The cocaine has since disappeared.

And Aristide doesn't think Haiti has a drug problem...

Posted 7:55 PM by John Adams |
No Abortions With U.S. Money

U.S. officials have decided that no family-planning groups pushing abortion will get money to fight AIDS with, according to Reuters. This shouldn't matter too much in Haiti, where most abortions are illegal anyway.

Posted 9:01 PM by John Adams |
This Day in History

From UPI's Almanac:

One week from today, February 18th, will be the 10th anniversary of a dark day in Haiti's history. On February 18th, 1993, a ferry carrying more than 800 people capsized off Haiti's western coast, killing at least 150 people and leaving several hundred more missing and presumed drowned, and a missionary flight (MFI to be precise) with 13 people aboard was commandeered at gunpoint in Haiti and flown to Miami, where the alleged hijacker surrendered.

It's really hard to believe it's been ten years already...

Posted 11:57 AM by John Adams |
Aristide: We Are Victims, I Swear

CNN reports that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is disputing the State Department report that cites Haiti as one country that has not done enough to stem the flow of drugs from its ports to the United States. As has become typical of the president, he quickly leapt from denying the charges to accusing the U.S. of racism.

"Haiti is not guilty of these charges. We are a poor country and we feel victimized by these actions," Aristide told reporters after meeting David Lee, chief of the special mission of the Organization of American States to Haiti.

"The U.S. Coast Guard patrolling our waters sees boat people, but they never see boats transporting drugs."

And yet, they've still managed to find cocaine smuggled into Miami on several vessels arrived from Cap-Haitien. Did the racist oppressors plant flour in ship's fuel tanks in a nefarious plot to afflict yet another indignity upon the little regime that could?

One member of Parliament, whose visa was revoked, and also happens to be a Muslim, decries ``religious persecution."

Nawoon Marcellus, a deputy in Haiti's lower house of parliament and a member of Aristide's Lavalas Family political party, charged that the revocation of his visa was based on religious rather than criminal grounds.

"This is religious persecution," Marcellus, a member of Haiti's small Islamic community, said at a press conference on Tuesday. "They took my visa not because I am a drug trafficker, but because I am a Muslim."

The U.S. is gearing up for war, is undergoing a recession, and still has not yet found Osama bin Laden, but Marcellus is convinced that he has been singled out for religious discrimination. Got proof?