Another High-Ranking Member of the Police Force Flees the Country

Associated Press

 Saying he feared for his life, the former spokesman of Haiti’s much-criticized police said Friday he had gone into
exile in Canada.  Jean-Dady Simeon, the third high-ranking member of the force to flee the country this year, had been spokesman for the 4,000-member force until he was appointed head of public relations in May.

“I was threatened by police officers,” he said in a telephone interview with the private Haitian broadcaster Radio Caraibes on Friday. He declined to elaborate.

Haitian officials declined to comment on Simeon’s claims.

“Simeon wanted to leave Haiti to settle his personal affairs, and he needed a pretext,” Minister of Culture and Communication Lilas Desquiron said.

The government and opposition have been at loggerheads since Aristide’s party swept 2000 legislative elections the opposition says were rigged. The Organization of American States has urged Aristide’s government to establish a secure environment and disarm partisans before it calls new legislative elections to end the stalemate.

The police force, accused of human rights abuses, also should be reformed and purged of corruption, the OAS has said.