Note on the passing of J. David Lyall

I was saddened to wake up this morning and learn from Thor Burnham of the passing of old Haiti hand and New Orleans acquaintance J. David Lyall. I was fortunate enough to chat with with David about Haiti-related matters in New Orleans from time to time. Having lived among the Haitian people in the manner in which he had, David had an impressive and lucid grasp of the political realities on the ground, and I always enjoyed the insight that he brought to our discussions. Many "experts" on Haiti could have learned a thing or two from him. Rest in peace, David, and I hope you are back
strolling the cool hills of Kenscoff in peace once more.

A new push for tourism in Haiti against the obstacles

A new push for tourism in Haiti against the obstacles

Entrepreneurs are trying to build a tourism sector. But political and social turmoil, which twice has smothered attempts in decades past, is a daunting impediment in post-quake Haiti.


By Allyn Gaestel, Los Angeles Times

June 10, 2012, 5:00 a.m.


(Read the original article here)

JACMEL, Haiti — "Vacation to Haiti/It nearly broke my heart."

So rapped Miami hip-hop heavyweight Rick Ross in 2009, but the lyric could be current: Haiti is better known for its natural disasters and political turmoil than for its tourists.

Now, however, a pioneering class of Haiti-loving entrepreneurs is investing time and money to change that.

"People just have no clue," said Michael Capponi, a Miami nightclub and real estate tycoon who has set his sights on Haiti. "They know that it's an island, but they don't even know that it's an island with beaches."

Yet building a tourism sector won't be easy.

The earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 destroyed much of the capital as well as this historic southern beach town, killing several hundred thousand people. Political stability and economic growth were hit as hard as Haiti's cinder block homes.

Post-quake Haiti was again synonymous with disaster. Helping Haiti became a popular humanitarian cause; mission groups and aid workers flocked to the country en masse. And therein came a twist.

When they arrived, many aid workers became smitten with Haitian culture, rhythms and art. They embraced the tropical climate and color.

"This catastrophe has helped people discover Haiti again," said Lorraine Silvera, owner of Lolo's, an upscale restaurant catering to foreigners on a picturesque beach outside Jacmel.

So far, the main visitors to Haiti's tourist spots are aid workers and members of the Haitian diaspora, but businesses are hoping to expand to draw traditional tourists.

Forty-five minutes north of Port-au-Prince, the capital, is the Cote-des-Arcadins, a stretch of white beaches nestled at the foot of steep mountains. There the traveler will find Wahoo Bay Beach, a family-owned resort with lush gardens and a wide view of the turquoise sea. The Lemke family has invested in extensive renovations at the resort since October 2010.

This year, Genevieve Lemke and her daughter, Jennifer, tried to promote a college "spring break" trip to Haiti, partnering with the nonprofit business marketing organization Brand Haiti. They had scheduled two trips for March but called them off when Prime Minister Garry Conille abruptly resigned in late February, spurring tension in the streets of Port-au-Prince and alarming would-be vacationers.

"People abroad are still a little bit nervous about Haiti," Genevieve Lemke said.

Instability, both political and social, is one of the central impediments to Haitian tourism. And it has smothered hopes of building a tourism sector twice before.

After an international exposition in Haiti in 1949, the country was termed the "pearl of the Antilles" through much of the 1950s. The brutal dictatorship of Francois Duvalier put an end to that.

Tourism began to rebound under the loosened tyranny of the dictator's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, in the 1970s, only to be crushed again with the onset of AIDS in the 1980s.

Some believe that Haiti may now have another chance.

Paul Clammer is writing the "Bradt Travel Guide for Haiti," due in November. It will be the first stand-alone, English-language guidebook to Haiti published since the 1980s. Clammer thinks the expressed interest in the book speaks to a potential "third big tourism wave."

Entrepreneurs and investors are literally banking on it.

For instance, the budget for Capponi's project in Jacmel, including a boutique hotel, has ballooned from $700,000 to $2.5 million.

Since his family founded Tour Haiti in 2004 in Jacmel, Jean Cyril Pressoir has worked for free. But he has his fingers crossed that the company will make a profit next year.

The Lemkes, meanwhile, don't know when they'll pay off their renovations at Wahoo Bay, but they still invest in upgrades every month.

All this optimism is not without its challenges.

Infrastructure for tourism remains minimal. International visitors must fly into Port-au-Prince's muggy airport and brave frenzied, cutthroat competition among porters vying to carry their luggage. Hotel prices are inflated because hoteliers have to cover the costs of private water sources, electrical generators to augment irregular power, and even private trash incineration.

The service sector needs kick-starting. A hospitality training school in the Cote-des-Arcadins, funded by the Brazilian aid group Viva Rio, has yet to open, but it is already receiving urgent inquiries from hoteliers across the country frustrated by incompetent workers.

To top it off, Haiti's business climate is notoriously lethargic. Capponi's boutique hotel, Le Village de Port de Jacmel, was scheduled to open in March. In May, the building stood half refurbished, inhabited by squatters, as Capponi struggled to get the government and skittish private investors to simultaneously commit to the project. Each group wants the other to go first.

The humanitarian disaster after the 2010 earthquake also created a dilemma for travelers: Who wants to sip a rum cocktail knowing that, just down the road, malnourished children are languishing in tents?

To address this situation, "voluntourists" are being encouraged to take trips that divide time between helping Haitians and enjoying the island. But even this has its problems. Critics say a couple of days of volunteering has minimal effect on needy communities, not to mention the fact that volunteers performing manual labor undermines the local labor market.

Yet visitors are still wanted, and needed.

"The way to help the poverty in Haiti is to come to Haiti, eat Haitian food, drink Haitian rum," Pressoir said.

Gaestel is a special correspondent.

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Mario Dupuy: Unfit to serve as Haiti’s Minister of Culture

It is disgusting that a country that continually produces some of the greatest novelists, poets, filmmakers, painters, musicians and other artists in the world should have as the lead representative of its culture a discredited political apparatchik and quisling of authoritarian rule such as the man proposed yesterday by Haiti's new Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe.

Mario Dupuy, as the Secretary of State for Communications during the second term of Haitian President Jean-Betrand Aristide - a man branded by the press-freedom organization Reporters Sans Frontières as a predator of press freedom in May 2002 - served as one of the most public faces of a regime dedicated to strangling, rather than encouraging freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

“Impunity has been at the root of the authorities' strategy of cowing the media,” Reporters Sans Frontières said in its press release at the time, directly referring to the Aristide government’s active blocking of the investigation into the 3 April 2000 murder of Radio Haiti Inter journalist Jean Dominique and the 3 December 2001 murder by a pro-government mob of Radio Echo 2000 reporter Brignol Lindor in the town of Petit-Goâve.

“At best, [Aristide] is protecting the killers, at worst he is involved in the murder himself,” RSF continued in its statement.

On a 3 March 2002 radio broadcast, Dominique's widow, the journalist Michèle Montas, said that “all the resources, i.e. logistical, technical, and financial made available in this judicial case by the preceding government have been cancelled.”

Such was the commitment to freedom of expression of the government that Haiti’s newly proposed Minister of Culture served.

And yet there is more.

How can those of us who were present in Haiti from 2001 until 2004 forget the role that Mario Dupuy played in legitimizing violence against demonstrators and the press?

To recall but a few examples:

On 3 December 2002, the first anniversary of the murder of the journalist Brignol Lindor,  after several thousand Aristide supporters had chased away anti-Aristide demonstrators with stones and bottles and hit them with metal bars and whips in Place d’Italie in the heart of Port-au-Prince, when asked about the violence Dupuy breezily concluded that "this is democracy. People, including government supporters, may take part in any march they want to.”

In September 2003, Dupuy was one of numerous Aristide government officials who, during simultaneous television and radio interviews, announced that the regime they served would  move to revive a presidential decree passed by dictator  Jean-Claude Duvalier on 17 October 1977, which stated that “broadcast information must be precise, objective and impartial, and must come from authorized sources which are to be mentioned when broadcasting. Those who are responsible for the broadcasts have to control the programs to ensure that the information—even when it is correct—cannot harm or alarm the population by its form, presentation or timing. The broadcast stations will provide a channel for the broadcasting of official programs, if so required by the public powers....” This was a naked assault on articles 28-1, 28-2 and 245 of Haiti’s 1987 constitution, which forbids censorship and protects free speech and journalistic practices.

On 10 February 2004, as the Aristide government was teetering amid massive street protests against its rule and a rebellion initiated by a formerly loyal street gang in the northern city of Gonaives, Dupuy said he was “saddened by the behavior of certain journalists who he claimed are working as press attachés for the terrorists, blindly relaying the false information that they give them in an attempt to psychologically destabilize the police and the general population.”

In the weeks that followed before Aristide’s 29 February flight into exile, journalists, both foreign and Haitian, were routinely attacked and robbed by armed government partisans. I personally had a 9 millimeter pistol pointed at my head and a shotgun trained on me by armed government supporters. A number journalists suffered much worse fates.

This is the person that Haiti’s President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe  think is the man to represent Haitian culture to the nation and the world? This in a country whose writers from Jacques Roumain to Lyonel Trouillot, whose musicians from Nicolas Geffrard to the band Boukman Eksperyans and whose artists from Edouard Duval-Carrié to Stevenson Magloire have always most eloquently expressed themselves in the key of opposition to tyranny?

Amnesia may be the politically correct posture to adopt in Haiti today, to pretend that all of the country’s history began with the devastating earthquake of 12 January 2010. But as someone who came into office as a political novice promising a break from Haiti’s traditionally corrupt political class, President Martelly and Prime Minister Lamothe owe the Haitian people better than the attempted recycling of one of the tainted elements of Haiti’s painful past.

After Charles Taylor, Justice for Haiti?

26 April 2012

After Charles Taylor, Justice for Haiti?

The Huffington Post

(Read the original article here)

The conviction today by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of former Liberian president Charles Taylor for aiding and abetting war crimes committed in neighboring Sierra Leone -- the first such conviction of a former head of state -- is a welcome development for those seeking to hold politicians accountable for their crimes.

Coming as it does on the heels of the conviction earlier this year of former Democratic Republic of Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga for war crimes, the Taylor conviction represents a welcome completion of one of the ICC's missions.

To those of us who have seen the political convulsions of the Caribbean nation of Haiti first-hand over the years, the country makes a compelling case for attention by the ICC as perpetrators of human rights abuses often go unpunished or are even rehabilitated in subsequent governments.

Two of Haiti's former rulers, Jean-Claude Duvalier and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, returned to the country from exile early last year, and both stand accused of gross human rights abuses.

Duvalier, who took the helm of Haiti in 1971 as a rotund teenager following the death of his father, the dictator François Duvalier, presided over a police state where the national treasury was viewed as little more than a personal checking account and all political dissent was ruthlessly crushed. Perhaps the best symbol of his reign, which ended in 1986 amid a popular uprising, was a prison on the outskirts of the Haitian capital called Fort Dimanche, where thousands of enemies of the state were sent to die by execution, torture or to simply waste away amidst conditions that were an affront to humanity.

Mr. Aristide, one of the driving forces behind the movement that ousted Mr. Duvalier, is a former Catholic priest who twice served as Haiti's president and was twice ousted, once by a military coup and once by a popular uprising and armed rebellion. It was the abuses of Mr. Aristide's government that I witnessed first-hand.

In February 2004, in the midst of the chaotic second rebellion against Mr. Aristide's rule, the photojournalist Alex Smailes and I found ourselves in the central Haitian city of Saint Marc, at the time the last barrier between Aristide and a motley collection of once-loyal street gangs and former soldiers who were sweeping down from the country's north seeking to overthrow him.

Several days earlier, on Feb. 7, an armed anti-Aristide group, the Rassemblement des militants conséquents de Saint Marc (Ramicos), based in the neighborhood of La Scierie, had attempted to drive government forces from the town, seizing the local police station, which they set on fire.
On Feb. 9, the combined forces of the Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH), the Unité de Sécurité de la Garde du Palais National (USGPN) -- a unit directly responsible for the president's personal security -- and a local paramilitary organization named Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) retook much of the city.

By Feb. 11, a few days before our arrival, Bale Wouze -- headed by a former parliamentary representative of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party named Amanus Mayette -- had commenced the battle to retake La Scierie. Often at Mayette's side was a government employee named Ronald Dauphin, known to residents as "Black Ronald," often garbed in a police uniform even though he was in no way officially employed by the police.

When Alex and I arrived in the town, we found the USGPN and Bale Wouze patrolling Saint Marc as a single armed unit. Speaking to residents there -- amidst a surreal backdrop of burned buildings, the stench of human decay, drunken gang members threatening our lives with firearms and a terrified population -- we soon realized that something awful had happened in Saint Marc.

According to multiple residents interviewed during that visit and a subsequent visit that I made to the town in June 2009, after government forces retook the town -- and after a press conference there by Yvon Neptune, at the time Aristide's Prime Minister and also the head of the Conseil Superieur de la Police Nationale d'Haiti -- a textbook series of war crimes took place.

Residents spoke of how Kenol St. Gilles, a carpenter with no political affiliation, was shot in each thigh, beaten unconscious by Bale Wouze members and thrown into a burning cement depot, where he died. Unarmed Ramicos member Leroy Joseph was decapitated, while Ramicos second-in-command Nixon François was simply shot. In the ruins of the burned-out commissariat, Bale Wouze members gang raped a 21-year-old woman, while other residents were gunned down by police firing from a helicopter as they tried to flee over a nearby mountain. A local priest told me matter-of-factly at the time of Bale Wouze that "these people don't make arrests, they kill."

According to a member of a Human Rights Watch delegation that visited Saint Marc a month after the killings, at least 27 people were murdered there between Feb. 11 and Aristide's flight into exile at the end of the month. Her conclusion was supported by the research of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, a Haitian human rights organization.

Following Aristide's overthrow, several members of Bale Wouze were lynched, while Yvon Neptune turned himself over to the interim government that ruled Haiti from March 2004 until the inauguration of President René Préval in May 2006.

Held in prison without trial until his May 2006 release on humanitarian grounds, a May 2008 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the Haitian state had violated the American Convention on Human Rights in its detention of Neptune, though stressed that it was "not a criminal court in which the criminal responsibility of an individual can be examined." Neptune ran unsuccessfully for president in Haiti's 2010 elections.

After being jailed for three years without trial, Amanus Mayette was freed from prison in April 2007. Arrested in 2004, Ronald Dauphin subsequently escaped from jail, and was re-arrested during the course of an anti-kidnapping raid in Haiti's capital in July 2006. Despite several chaotic public hearings, to date, none of the accused for the killings in La Scierie has ever gone to trial.
Frustratingly for the people of St. Marc, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the events they experienced have become a political football among international political actors.

The United Nations independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, in a 2005 statement dismissed allegations of a massacre and described what occurred as "a clash", a characterization that seemed unaware of the fact that not all among those victimized had any affiliation with Haiti's political opposition.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH), a U.S.-based organization, has lauded Mr. Dauphin as "a Haitian grassroots activist." The IJDH itself maintains close links with Mr. Aristide's U.S. attorney, Ira Kurzban, who is listed as one of the group's founders, has served as the chairman of its board of directors and whose law firm, according to U.S. Department of Justice filings, earned nearly $5 million for its lobbying work alone representing the Aristide government during the era of its worst excesses. By comparison, the firm of former U.S. congressmen Ron Dellums received the relatively modest sum of $989,323 over the same period.

When I returned to St. Marc in June of 2009, I found its residents still wondering when someone would be held accountable for the terrible crimes they had been subjected to. Amazil Jean-Baptiste, the mother of Kenol St. Gilles, said simply, "I just want justice for my son." A local victim's rights group of survivors of the pogrom, the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), formed to help advocate on residents' behalf, but have had precious little success in what passes for Haiti's justice system, broken and dysfunctional long before January 2010's devastating earthquake.
Though Mr. Aristide remains something of a fading star for a handful of commentators outside of Haiti -- most of whom have not spent significant time in the country, cannot speak its language and have never bothered to sit down with the victims of the Aristide government's crimes there -- to those of us who have seen a bit of its recent history firsthand, the words of veteran Trinidadian diplomat Reginald Dumas -- a man who does know Haiti -- seem apt, that Mr. Aristide "[acquired] for himself a reputation at home which did not match the great respect with which he was held abroad.''

The ICC has sometimes been criticized for acting as if war crimes and crimes against humanity are simply African problems, taking place in distant lands. The people of St. Marc, only a 90 minute flight from Miami, and the survivors of Forth Dimanche, know differently. Though Mr. Duvalier sadly cannot be tried by the ICC as the court only has jurisdiction with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of Rome Statute, no such restrictions apply to Mr. Aristide.

It is time that the government of Haitian president Michel Martelly and Haiti's parliament ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and give the victims of Haiti the justice that they have so long been denied.

Jilap records 190 deaths by firearms in Port-au-Prince area from January to March 2012.

Haïti-Sécurité : Cent quatre-vingt dix tués par balles, de janvier à mars 2012, selon Jilap

jeudi 19 avril 2012

(Read the original article here)

P-au-P, 19 avril 2012 [AlterPresse] --- La commission épiscopale nationale justice et paix (sigle créole Jilap) enregistre au total 190 décès par balles de Janvier à Mars 2012 dans son 42e rapport sur la violence dans la zone métropolitaine de Port-au-Prince, publié en avril 2012.

La commission dit observer une légère diminution des cas de morts par balles au cours de ce trimestre (janvier à mars 2012), comparé au trimestre précédent (octobre à décembre 2011) au cours duquel 203 morts par balles ont été enregistrés.

Le nombre de décès par balles a connu une légère baisse au mois de janvier 2012 (41 cas), pour remonter en force en février et mars, respectivement 78 et 71 cas, indique le document.

Précédemment, en octobre, novembre et décembre 2011, le nombre s’élevait respectivement à 62, 77, 64 morts par balles.

Selon la commission, la plupart des personnes sont victimes de la violence armée dans la capitale. D’autres formes de violence répandues sont les braquages, holdups et vols à main armée, souligne le rapport de Jilap.

Les crimes commis à partir de motocyclettes atteignent un record au mois de février 2012 avec 16 cas contre 4 en janvier et 12 en mars, selon les chiffres fournis.

Quatre policiers sont assassinés au cours du dernier trimestre, contre 6 pour le trimestre précédent.

Dans le rapport, Jilap signale un ensemble d’actes de violence commis sur plusieurs individus dont l’assassinat du directeur de radio Boukman, Nelson Jean Liphaite, et celui du peintre Burton Chenet.

Jilap dit constater que les déclarations et promesses des autorités sur la situation d’insécurité qui prévaut dans la zone métropolitaine n’aboutissent pas à un redressement de la situation.

« Définir une politique de sécurité est et demeure l’œuvre de l’Etat et doit s’articuler à travers une volonté d’agir pour le bien être de la population », fait savoir Jilap.

L’organisme de droits humains estime que la prévention en matière de sécurité de façon permanente, les poursuites en justice des bandits ainsi que les enquêtes ne se réalisent pas.

Ceci démontre le degré d’impunité dont jouissent des malfaiteurs laissant le champ libre à n’importe quelle initiative criminelle qui peut être perpétrée en toute quiétude, indique t-il.

« La lutte pour instaurer un climat de sécurité nécessite justice et vérité dans les tribunaux, en plus, il faut un climat de justice sociale entre les citoyens et citoyennes », soutient la commission.

Jilap préconise « la création d’un cadre sécuritaire pour les petits marchands, leur permettant d’avoir une assurance sociale les protégeant contre des actes de banditisme et des accidents comme des incendies ».

Des travaux d’entretien, la mise en application de règlements du trafic routier, un contrôle plus strict sur la vente des cartes de téléphone cellulaire, la réparation des pylônes électriques en mauvais état sont des mesures pouvant assurer plus de sécurité dans la zone métropolitaine, croit Jilap.

Face au grand nombre de morts par balles, la Commission insiste sur un contrôle effectif et efficace de la circulation et du port d’armes à feu dans le pays. [emb kft gp apr 18/04/2012 16 :20]

Dominican journalist Nuria Piera responds to Haiti President Michel Martelly

Aristide accused of taking bribes from Miami businesses

4 March 2012

Aristide accused of taking bribes from Miami businesses

By Jacqueline Charles and Jay Weaver, The Miami Herald

(Read the original article here)

Former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is once again in the crosshairs of the U.S. government, this time for allegedly pocketing millions of dollars in bribes from Miami businesses that brokered long-distance phone deals with Haiti's government-owned telecommunications company, according to court records and legal sources.

Aristide is not identified by name in a recent federal indictment charging four South Florida business people and two former Haitian government officials. But defense attorneys say "Official B" referenced in the corruption- and money-laundering indictment is indeed the ex-president.

According to the indictment, Official B and senior officials of Haiti Teleco, the telecommunications company owned by Haiti's Central Bank, allegedly received payments totaling about $2.3 million from Miami businesses Cinergy Telecommunications and Uniplex Telecom Technologies. The businesses are accused of using "shell" companies to kick back the money to those officials.

Aristide's lawyer, Ira Kurzban, declined to comment about the Justice Department's investigation because the ex-president hasn't been charged with any crime. But, Kurzban said: "I view this as part of the same smear campaign that the United States has orchestrated against Aristide since he was first elected in 1990."

The indictment alleges that the bribes were passed to Aristide via "Company A," a reference to Digitek, a suspected front owned by Aristide's brother-in-law, Lesly Lavelanet. He could not be reached for comment at his Coral Springs home.

Since an earlier related indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in 2009, a dozen South Florida business people and Haitian officials have been charged in the high-profile case, alleging the payment of kickbacks in exchange for discounted long-distance phone rates. Profits from those lower rates were pocketed by the Haitian officials — not the government's phone company. So far, seven of those defendants have been convicted of corruption or money laundering, including Patrick Joseph, who pleaded guilty in February to accepting bribes. Joseph is cooperating with Justice Department lawyers and is a crucial witness in the investigation of Aristide, according to sources familiar with the case.

Joseph, who served as Aristide's director general of Haiti Teleco in March 2001 to June 2003, has told U.S. authorities that he shared some of those kickbacks with the former president, the sources said.

Joseph's father, Venel Joseph, appointed by Aristide, was the governor of the Bank of Haiti, the central bank, during that period and is referenced in the indictment as "Official A.''

The Central Bank was used to distribute the kickbacks paid by the Miami businesses, the indictment says.

Patrick Joseph's Miami attorneys, Guy Lewis and Richard Dansoh, declined to comment. Justice Department officials also would not comment.

At Joseph's plea hearing last month, a prosecutor said "half" — or $1 million — of the alleged kickbacks were "intended" for "Official B, an official in the executive branch of the Haitian government."

"In exchange for these bribes, Official B and Joseph provided Uniplex and Cinergy with various business advantages, including an exclusive agreement to market certain calling cards at a favorable rate,"

Justice Department lawyer James Koukios said in court.

"In addition, Joseph was aware of and agreed that additional bribe payments to Official B would be laundered through Company A," Koukios said, without mentioning Digitek by name.

The revelation that federal officials are still pursuing Aristide, years after a U.S. grand jury investigation failed to nab him on drug-trafficking and money-laundering allegations, comes at a politically charged time in Haiti.

Haitian media reported last week that President Michel Martelly's government had indicted Aristide for corruption and drug trafficking during his rule, immediately triggering anger among his supporters.

Haiti's justice minister told The Miami Herald the reports were false.

Still, thousands marched through the streets of Haiti's capital Wednesday, singing pro-Aristide slogans while bashing Martelly, to mark the eighth anniversary of Aristide's ouster from power on Feb.29, 2004.

The demonstration — the biggest anti-Martelly protest since he came to power in May — showed that Aristide still enjoys a measure of popularity. He returned to Haiti from South Africa last March over the strong objections of the Obama administration.

Before it was privatized last year at the behest of the U.S. government, Haiti Teleco was a corruption-plagued, money-losing company that fueled the bank accounts of its executives. Fewer than 2 percent of Haitians had service from its landline monopoly, but it had a lucrative long-distance business. After the January 2010 earthquake, the company finally got a lifeline when a firm named Viettel, run by Vietnam's military, bought a major stake in the entity, reducing Haiti's shares to 40 percent.

The controversy over Haiti Teleco's corrupt past will play out again Monday, when a former senior executive, Jean René Duperval, faces trial on money-laundering charges in Miami federal court as part of the initial indictment. He is accused of receiving bribes from the same Miami businesses.

The trial of Duperval, Haiti Teleco's former director of international relations, highlights the Justice Department's persistence in pursuing the bribery case and Aristide.

Some question the zeal. But Alex Dupuy, a sociology professor at Wesleyan University who has written about the two-time ex-president, said "if they have solid evidence of his involvement in bribery or other criminal activities, they should indict him and bring him to justice."

The U.S. government may be sending a signal to Aristide, called Titid by his admirers, to think twice about trying to re-enter the political scene, observers said.

"The display of popular support for Aristide is very worrisome to the U.S., so indicting Titid before a potential comeback makes perfect sense," said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia.

Still, unless the Justice Department has an air-tight case, arresting Aristide could have volatile consequences, observers said.

Corruption and drug-trafficking charges have long dogged Aristide.

Haiti's interim government produced four blistering reports from two government investigative commissions, alleging he had embezzled more than $20 million of his country's meager public funds.

But the Haitian government's financial watchdog agency could not prove the allegations. Also, a civil lawsuit filed in Miami by the interim government, gained no traction.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors investigated Aristide for allegedly accepting bribes from drug traffickers. But they could not make their case because of a lack of financial documents to back up convicted cocaine kingpin Jacques Ketant's accusations, according to sources familiar with that probe.

Now, the mere mention of Aristide as Official B in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act indictment filed by the Justice Department in January marks the first time he has been implicated in the U.S. bribery investigation into Haiti's state-owned telecommunications company.

From 2001 to 2004, "Official B was an official in the executive branch of the Haitian government," says the indictment, describing the exact period of Aristide's second term as president."I am led to believe that Official B is the former president of Haiti, Aristide," said veteran Miami criminal defense attorney Joel Hirschhorn, who represents Cinergy and two of its executives in the case.

"There is no doubt that Official B is Aristide based on the language in the indictment," said Miami lawyer David Weinstein, who was the chief of narcotics in the U.S. Attorney's Office during the past decade. He and other prosecutors won convictions against several Haitian government and police officials for accepting payoffs from drug traffickers, who used the country to ship cocaine to the United States.

But Weinstein cautioned that the Justice Department will face daunting challenges in making a money-laundering case against Aristide, even if the cooperating witness, Joseph, points investigators in the right direction.

There is a looming deadline in the probe because of the statute of limitations. Also crucial: Internal Revenue Service agents must find bank or financial records to show that Aristide received payments, if he did.

"Without someone producing a picture of him taking the money or agents uncovering a bank account directly linking him to payments, they are going to have a hard time building a case to win a conviction,"

Weinstein said.

Last week, Hirschhorn succeeded in getting Cinergy dismissed as a defendant before Monday's trial.

"My clients' dealings with Haiti Teleco were perfectly legitimate,"

said Hirschhorn, who added that Cinergy's top executives, now fugitives in Brazil, only met Aristide once for a brief moment. "They helped Haiti Teleco get through some very difficult and trying times."