FBI QUIZZES HAITIAN FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, JEAN-CHARLES OVER VISIT TO ALA-IGBO, DEPORTS HIM
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Former Haitian senator and presidential candidate Moïse Jean-Charles told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he was arrested in the U.S. by the FBI and deported to Haiti.
Jean-Charles spoke briefly as he arrived at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in the capital of Port-au-Prince, looking distraught. He said U.S. authorities detained him on Monday as he returned from Nigeria and seriously interrogated him about his recent trip to Africa. He said he spent the night in jail and was deported on Tuesday.
The Senator had just returned from Nigeria where he led a 10-man Haitian delegation, on a home-coming mission to Enugu, the historic capital of Igboland, to perform conventional Igbo rituals such as traditional naming and name adoption, after they traced their roots to Igboland.
“They’ve forbidden me from entering the U.S. for the next five years,” he said. “They’ve cancelled the visa and they’ve put me in jail. It’s a humiliating thing.”
The arrest prompted a small protest in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Delmas 47, where some people burned tires and threw rocks at passing cars.
Jean-Charles ran for president in 2015 and 2016 against opponents including slain President Jovenel Moïse, who was shot July 7 at his private residence. Jean-Charles was previously a senator and also served as mayor for the northern town of Milot, near where Moïse was born.
Despite his arrest and interrogation, Jean-Charles remains committed to establishing full contact between Haitians and their Igbo homeland.
Recall that during his speech while being received by the Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, he said: “I have not come here as a foreign person. I have come back home. Before I keep on talking, I want to on behalf of all Haitians, all the blocks in Haiti, to thank you (Ugwuanyi) for receiving us after 218 years.
,”I have visited many countries, many places around the world but this is the first time I have visited a country that everybody looks like me”.
It is yet to be understood why his attempt to re-connect Haitians to their Igbo roots made the US to have a fit.
Does it mean that Uncle Sam feels threatened by any prospect of Pan-Africanism and econo-political rapprochement between Africans on both sides of the Atlantic?