|
Jean Rony Philippe, a
44-year-old businessman and political activist
from Haiti’s southeastern city of Jacmel, was
driving home from Port-au-Prince on Apr. 3, 2014
when he was ambushed, robbed, shot, and left for
dead by a eight heavily armed men. The crime, he
believes, was ordered by former Sen. Joseph
Lambert, who is today one of President Michel
Martelly’s closest advisors.
“My family and
I have become a problem for Lambert,”
Mr. Philippe said in a long interview with
Haïti Liberté, in which he detailed the
ambush and his long history of “political
rivalry” with Mr. Lambert. “We are preventing
him from controlling the [Southeast] department
in its entirety, and I have been working hard to
keep him from reigning as lord and master there.
That is his problem with me.”
Despite much
talk, especially in the Southeast department,
that he was behind the attempted assassination,
Mr. Lambert has offered no comment on the
attack, nor have his political allies, Sen.
Edwin “Edo” Zenny and Sen. Wenceslas Lambert,
his brother.
Mr. Philippe’s
charges come as restauranteur Woodly “Sonson
Lafamilia” Ethéard, another close Martelly
associate, turned himself into the Haitian
police on May 8 on charges of involvement in a
kidnapping ring known as the “Galil Gang.” Mr.
Ethéard, who was on the run and in headlines for
the past two months, is currently being held in
a Croix-de-Bouquets jail alongside Clifford
Brandt, another close Martelly associate who was
arrested two years ago for heading another
kidnapping ring but who has never been brought
to trial.
Trained in
Haitian universities as an agronomist, Mr.
Philippe owns a supermarket and an electronics
store in Jacmel and is the assistant treasurer
of the Southeast department’s Chamber of
Commerce. He is also a political activist in the
grassroots Organization of 22 (OG-22), which is
close to the Lavalas Family party, and was the
vice president of the Southeast’s Departmental
Election Office (BED) for the 2009 Senate
elections and the first round of the 2010
Presidential elections.
Well-regarded
in Jacmel, Mr. Philippe is a local success story,
having been born a peasant in nearby Belle-Anse,
where his family is still influential.
As he drove
home from the capital on the day of the attack,
Mr. Philippe noticed a grey Toyota Rav4 SUV
following him. Just before he reached the
Port-au-Prince suburb of Mariani, the Rav4
blocked him. Almost immediately his car was
surrounded “by eight men, all armed with
brand-new 9mm guns.”
After shooting
him once, the assailants took 40,000 gourdes
(US$886), his phone, two rings, and a bracelet,
but he was still negotiating for his life.
“At last I
realized that they wanted to kill me no matter
what,” Mr. Philippe said. “Still very calmly, I
told them, ‘if you want other things, just ask
me. But let me live! Here is the key to my car.
Take it with everything in it.’”
The men mocked
him and shot him again. “I was hit by many
bullets and finally, I fell down on the car
seat, pretending to be dead,” the victim said.
After the men
fled the scene, Mr. Philippe, bleeding
profusely, drove himself to a nearby Haitian
police station, and the police took him to the
nearby hospital of Doctors Without Borders. He
was transferred to and operated on at the Canapé
Vert hospital. He then traveled to Brooklyn, NY
where he underwent more surgery at Kings County
Hospital. He is now recuperating in New York
City.
Joseph Lambert
has long been accused and suspected of
involvement in drug trafficking and other
criminal activities in the Jacmel region.
In a May 12,
2006 secret diplomatic cable provided to
Haïti Liberté by WikiLeaks in 2011, then
U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson wrote
that Mr. Lambert was reported to be one “of the
best-known narco-traffickers in [Jacmel],
distributing money for favors and engaging in
vote buying... SIMO [U.S. Army’s Systems
Integration and Management Office] and DEA [Drug
Enforcement Agency] Port-au-Prince report that
information on file reflects that he is
suspected of association with known drug
traffickers in Jacmel.”
In another
secret Aug. 2, 2006 cable, Ms. Sanderson
reported that Edmund Mulet, then the head of the
UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH),
complained that “drug trafficking has become an
increasingly alarming problem, which is
difficult to combat, in part because of the drug ties within the Haitian
Government. In this connection, he mentioned
Senate leader Joseph Lambert and Security
Commission Chair Youri Latortue,” another former
senator who is today a close Martelly
advisor.
In 2013, a
young Jacmel man, Sherlson Sanon, claimed to
have worked for Mr. Lambert as a hired gunman
for over 10 years and to have been instructed by
him to kill Deputies Sorel Jacinthe and
Levaillant Louis-Jeune. In his confession to
police, Mr. Sanon claimed to have engaged in
drug trafficking and murder for Mr. Lambert as
well as Sen. Zenny.
Asked by
Haïti Liberté what he knew about Mr. Sanon’s
charges, Mr. Philippe replied that he had “no
elements to verify” the accusations but said
that “one day the Haitian judicial system has to
free itself from the claws of Joseph Lambert and
of the government he belongs to if we want to
shed light on certain cases in which he is
implicated.”
This may be
difficult because, according to Mr. Philippe,
“in Jacmel, for example, Lambert named the state
prosecutor, the justice of the peace (juge de
paix), and the investigating judge also. The
local chief justice (doyen) is under his
control. If Lambert controls the justice system
to this extent, who is going to arrest him, even
if he is accused or found guilty of whatever? He
will be declared not guilty, and that’s it.”
Mr. Philippe
explained he had once reluctantly visited Mr.
Lambert, on his invitation, because his brother
had been falsely arrested. One phone call from
Mr. Lambert to the local judge resulted in his
brother’s immediate release from jail, he said.
“We need another governance, another
Haiti,” Mr. Philippe concluded. “We need men and
women who choose to go to universities to learn
and to create jobs in the country, not choose to
become criminals, kidnappers, or drug
traffickers.” |
