MIAMI - A former Haitian airport police commander was accused Tuesday of conspiring with other high-level police and drug traffickers to smuggle Colombian cocaine shipments through the Caribbean nation to the United States.
Romaine Lestin was expelled from the Dominican Republic on Friday and appeared in court Tuesday. He is the sixth Haitian official to face U.S. drug charges since Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in February.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Dube ordered Lestin jailed until a bail hearing Friday. The government asked that he be held until trial as a flight risk. Lestin, 35, could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Lestin allegedly took kickbacks to provide security for drug flights through Haiti's Port-au-Prince airport and split some of the money with other officers, according to a newly unsealed complaint written in May.
A Drug Enforcement Administration summary of allegations against Lestin said he was part of an organization that also included imprisoned drug kingpin Beaudouin "Jacques" Ketant; Jude Perrin, head of the Haitian judicial police, who has not been charged in the United States; and other Haitian police officials.
Informers told the DEA Lestin participated in planning and coordinating cocaine deliveries moving through the airport, and that he both received and handed out payoffs.
Lestin was arrested Thursday by Dominican police acting on a U.S. warrant at a hotel near the capital city of Santo Domingo, said Joe Killmer, DEA spokesman in Miami.
