A convicted Haitian cocaine smuggler who had assisted a U.S. investigation of drug trafficking in the administration of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been brought once again to the United States to face new narcotics charges.
This time, Jean Eliobert Jasme, who was taken into custody Thursday, is facing narcotics charges in federal court in Milwaukee. He’s accused of conspiring with two Haitian police officers to smuggle cocaine from Colombia through Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas into the United States.
Over his lifetime, Jasme, 59, has gained a notorious reputation in the U.S. war on drugs.
Jasme was expelled by Aristide in 2003, the year before the president’s ouster. The following year, Jasme pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to two counts of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, following charges in separate indictments out of Miami and Brooklyn.
Calling Jasme “one of the top-level traffickers in Haiti,” a federal prosecutor linked him to Colombian suppliers, Haitian distributors and several boatloads of cocaine seized on the Miami River in 2000. The prosecutor also tied him to cocaine seized at Miami International Airport.
Although reluctant at first to assist U.S. authorities, Jasme later became a central witness in the federal government’s mission to slow the flow of cocaine from Colombia via Haiti to South Florida. Jasme contributed to at least 17 prosecutions of Haitian government officials, senior police officers and other cocaine smugglers — with all but one ending in convictions.
He was rewarded by prosecutors for his cooperation in 2009 when a federal judge cut his 20-year prison sentence in half.
But Jasme did not leave the drug trade, according new charges filed by federal prosecutors in Milwaukee.
Jasme was arrested by Haitian National Police on Oct. 28, 2020, with 83 kilograms of cocaine in Gressier, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. He was jailed and later released.
Then last month, Jasme, also known as “Eddy One,” was arrested in a sting operation in Petionville by the Haitian National Police’s anti-drug trafficking unit. His arrest was considered significant in light of his high-level ties to previous Haitian government officials over the years and his stature in the Colombian cocaine trafficking trade.
Jasme’s extradition was signed off by Haiti’s justice minister, The Miami Herald confirmed. Two Haitian police officers also charged in his indictment — Ysa Dieudonne and Alex Mompremier — face extradition to the United States as well. Federal court records suggest the officers are fugitives.
The signed paperwork paved the way for Jasme’s transfer to the United States on Thursday. Jasme was turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration. A photo circulating on social media showed him smiling on the tarmac alongside DEA agents.
It remains to be seen whether Jasme will reprise his role as a federal informant.
More than a decade ago, prosecutors lauded Jasme for providing incriminating information on a variety of trafficking suspects with ties to the Aristide government, but they stopped short of naming the former president as one of them.
At the time, however, Jasme’s attorney, Paul Petruzzi, said that his client “cooperated” against the former president, who was forced from power and fled to South Africa in February 2004. He later returned to Haiti.
”It’s no secret that Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been under investigation for drug trafficking and money laundering,” Petruzzi said in 2009.
But federal authorities were never able to prove allegations that Aristide was paid millions of dollars by Haitian traffickers to allow them to use the country as a hub for shipping Colombian cocaine to the United States. Aristide, through his attorney in Miami, always denied any wrongdoing.
