HAITIAN COUP LEADER APPEALS TO KENYANS

As the Kenyan government ramps up to deploy police officers to the Caribbean nation of Haiti, Guy Philippe, a controversial Haitian figure, recently made a passionate appeal to the Kenyan people to put pressure on their leaders to shelve the contentious plan.

Philippe said the move is part of a Western imperialist effort to continue to control a predominantly African country that had booted European slavemasters in 1804. Philippe remains a divisive figure in Haiti. He reportedly previously served as a police chief and founded the Front for National Liberation and Reconstruction (FLRN), one of the paramilitary organisations that participated in the 2004 US-orchestrated coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first democratically elected leader. In the years leading up to the coup, US Special Forces reportedly trained Philippe in Ecuador.

In the post-coup era, he is reported to have continued paramilitary activities before winning a senate seat in 2016. However, he shortly thereafter withdrew a government certificate indicating he had been elected. Then he was arrested in January 2017 on money laundering charges related to drug trafficking and served time in a US prison. Philippe was released and deported back to Haiti in late 2023, after serving less than seven years of a nine-year sentence that he obtained after cutting a deal with US prosecutors to avoid a life sentence.

Since his recent return to Haiti, he is said to have joined up with another militant group, while becoming a vociferous campaigner against the US-led plan to deploy Kenyan police officers to Haiti.