Haiti Place Onetime Haitian kingpin Jacques Ketant to be freed from prison after helping feds in Miami

News Information

  • NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
  • NEWS_POSTED_ON: Oct 21, 2015
  • Views : 823
  • Category : Diaspora News
  • Description : Miami Herald

    APRIL 20, 2015

    BY JAY WEAVER
    jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

    Photo: Ketant lived in this mansion in Haiti before he went to prison in 2003. Miami Herald File
  • Location : Miami, FL, United States
  • Website : http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article19047087.html

Overview

  • A onetime Haitian cocaine kingpin who had accused former President Jean Bertrand Aristide of accepting drug-related bribes will soon be released from a U.S. prison after helping prosecutors convict a dozen fellow traffickers, government officials and police officers in a long-running case that exposed Haiti as a “narco-state.”

    Beaudouin “Jacques” Ketant saw his 27-year sentence chopped in half on Friday by a federal judge after the U.S. attorney's office in Miami recommended that reduction because of his “substantial assistance” as a witness in other successful prosecutions.

    Beaudouin “Jacques” Ketant
    Beaudouin “Jacques” Ketant Miami Herald File
    The one major exception: Aristide, though investigated for years, was never charged in connection with Ketant’s sprawling case.

    Ketant, 52, has been held at a low-security federal correctional institution in Louisiana and will soon be transferred to immigration authorities. He plans to fight his deportation because of the potential danger that might await him if he returns to his homeland, where Aristide's former bodyguard was recently killed — possibly for cooperating with U.S. authorities after serving a three-year prison sentence in this country.

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