Michel François
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michel-Joseph François was a colonel in the Haitian army. He helped topple Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 1991, then terrorized his country as chief of the police and secret police under dictator General Raoul Cédras; some 4,000 Haitians were killed. François fled the country in 1994 to the Dominican Republic. Though convicted in Haiti of assassinating an Aristide supporter, he was never extradited. When the Dominican Republic deported him for plotting another coup d'etat in Haiti, François landed in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
United States prosecutors arrested François in March, 1997 and charged him with smuggling 33 tons of cocaine and heroin into the U.S. from his private airstrip in Haiti, while taking millions in bribes from Colombian drug lords. François denied the charges and stayed in a Honduran prison until July, 1997, when the Honduran Supreme Court turned down U.S. extradition efforts for lack of evidence and subsequently released François.
[edit] External links
- "More from the Exile Files' - The life of ex-despots isn't all jail and frozen assets". from the Haiti Support Group
