The former director of the National Police of Haiti, Mario Andrésol, made revelations on the former President of the Republic, Michel Joseph Martelly and two senators currently in office. In a long interview with the journalist Arnaud Robert for Ayibopost, the former director of the PNH describes a police vassalized by the political power and sacked by corruption at the highest level.
The Haitian National Police was created in 1995 to replace the Haitian Armed Forces, which provided police functions. Mario Andrésol, a trained soldier, has held several positions within the institution since its creation before going into exile in 2001. He took the head of the PNH on July 22, 2005 under the transitional government of President Alexandre Boniface and the Prime Minister Gérard Latortue. The PNH has just celebrated its ten years of existence, it has the image of a highly corrupt institution, while it has just over 4000 police.
Mario Andrésol led the PNH for 7 years (from July 2005 to August 2012). With an explosive franchise, he claims that his successor, Godson Orelus, "screwed up" all his work to please former President Michel Joseph Martelly and his entourage. He delivers his most troubling memories to Ayibopost.
Death squads within the PNH.

"I arrived at the airport on a Tuesday and had to install myself as the police chief on Friday. The men who came to pick me up were actually a squadron of death. I did not know. I thought they were agents of the SWAT TEAM because they were the ones wearing the black uniform and Galil guns when I left the country. When I saw them at the airport, I thought it was a provision of the chief of police or the government.

I preferred to get in the car of a friend who had also come to get me. The well-equipped men in black had come with police vehicles and police-bullet-proof vests, they made my way into the street.

Arrived at the hotel Villa Creole, they invested and placed guards. Two days later, they were still there, and by reflex, I called one of them and asked him which promotion he belonged to. He replied that he was not promoted by the police. He told me that they were assailants who helped to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

They were old attachés, a heterogeneous group. They were not trained, but they knew how to handle weapons. When I started to question them, they told me that they were forty (40) and that they were called the "Back Up Delta". They said that where the police can not intervene, it is they who intervene. My predecessor (Editor's note, Leon Charles) knew about it. They told me, for example, at Fort National, they were the ones who intervened. They said that in those neighborhoods they did not look when they were shooting.

They wanted me to integrate them into the police. They told me that it was the director of the police who sometimes gave them some money, the director of the OAVCT (Editor's note: the Office Insurance of Vehicles against Third Parties) or the NPC (Editor's note : National Port Authority). When I was handed the list of members of the group, I saw that they were men I had already arrested when I was at the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police. Among them were former attachés and former police officers involved in drugs.

My first disposition was to hold a press conference and I stated that black uniforms no longer exist in the police force. If the public noticed men in black on the streets, they were not policemen. When these men were not black, they were kidnappers. "

Police plates to carry drugs

"I issued a statement announcing that all police vehicles would be marked. The numbers would be visible on the vehicles so that the public could identify them because previously, we could not really identify the police cars.

The license plates marked "Police" that resembled the other license plates were a frequent source of corruption. Since there were not many cars in the PNH, the plates were distributed in the police stations. Drug traffickers bribed police station officials and rented these 2000-dollar Haitian license plates per night. So when we said we saw police vehicles carrying drugs, that was true. These were license plates rented at the police stations. There was no control.