Retired Canadian police officer working on Haiti election dies after ambush

Canadian Press
Published: December 21, 2005

OTTAWA -- A retired Mountie assigned to help with election security in Haiti was shot and killed Tuesday by gunmen in Port-au-Prince.
Mark Bourque of Stoneham, Que., was one of 25 retired Canadian police officers who went to Haiti as part of a special elections team in October.
Bourque, 57, had been driving with a colleague on a road in a highly volatile slum when their car came under heavy fire, the UN said in a statement.
The shooting occurred in Cite Soleil, a Port-au-Prince slum that is controlled by gangs and where shootings occur daily.
David Wimhurst, a spokesman for the United Nations Civilian Police Mission in Haiti, told CBC's The National that Bourque and another Canadian were in a private car and were not on patrol at the time.
Bourque was seriously wounded in the leg, and later died from his injuries despite efforts by the second, unidentified Canadian and peacekeepers who arrived in an armoured personal carrier.
He said they happened to be driving through the area on their way to the unit's headquarters to prepare for their return to Canada for Christmas.
In a statement, the Canadian embassy said it ''demands that the Haitian government does everything to shed light on the circumstances of the attack and to bring the authors of this crime to justice.''
Prime Minister Paul Martin offered his condolences to Bourque's family.
''He died while serving his country and he will be greatly missed by all those whose lives he touched and helped make better,'' Martin said in a written statement.
The prime minister condemned the killing as a senseless act of violence, saying Bourque was in Haiti to promote democracy.
''His work there exemplified to the world the finest of Canada's values.''
Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean, who is from Haiti, said the news of Bourque's death was a ''dreadful shock.''
Bourque and 20 other RCMP officers met with Jean and her husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, last October at Rideau Hall just before leaving for Haiti. Jean said Bourque was optimistic about the mission, but also expressed concern about the rise in violence and insecurity in Haiti.
''Now the bullets of a hidden gunman have cruelly taken the life of a man of exemplary conduct and commitment,'' she said.
Prior to retirement, Bourque was a veteran detective who at one time was involved in investigating organized crime in Quebec. He reportedly helped set up the RCMP's Proceeds of Crime Unit.
''He was very generous, a dedicated detective with an enormous amount of passion,'' author Anthony Nicaso, a friend of Bourque's, told the CBC.
Another of Bourque's colleagues in Haiti told all-news channel LCN that the former RCMP officer may have been the victim of opposition groups trying to destabilize the country in the runup to elections.
''As they get closer to the election, I think more and more we're going to become targets,'' said Jean Rouselle from Laval, where he had recently returned from Haiti to attend Tuesday's funeral of another colleague, slain officer Valerie Gignac.
''We're volunteers and it's our choice to go there, but when you see one of your colleagues go down in the line duty it's makes you think,'' the Laval police officer said of Haiti.
The UN has pledged to reclaim the Cite Soleil slum, in which Bourque sustained his fatal wound, before the Jan. 8 national elections.
In addition to the special contingent of retired officers, 100 regular and about 25 retired Canadian police officers are working with the UN in the troubled island.
The UN police force there, made up of about 1,600 officers from 33 countries, is commanded by Chief Supt. R. Graham Muir of the RCMP.
Five UN peacekeepers have died in action since June 2004.

Canadian shot dead in Haiti

Retired RCMP officer worked with UN training local police preparing for election

By OLIVER MOORE , TU THANH HA and MARINA JIMÉNEZ

Wednesday, December 21, 2005 Page A1

With reports from Brian Laghi and Timothy Appleby

A retired police officer from Quebec, known for his candour and his innovative work fighting organized crime in the province, was killed in Haiti yesterday while serving with the United Nations.
Mark Bourque was shot while driving with another person near Cité Soleil, a notorious slum in the Haitian capital. He died within hours. He was 57.
A 35-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Mr. Bourque had been in the violence-racked country barely two months. He was there to help train local police officers preparing for an election that has been repeatedly postponed.
Marc Jacquet, the civilian police spokesman for the UN mission, confirmed in an interview from Port-au-Prince that Mr. Bourque was hit in the leg with a single bullet yesterday morning and died about two hours later. The other person in the vehicle was not injured.
Cité Soleil, a shantytown of open sewers, barefoot beggars and gang members near where Mr. Bourque was killed, is one of the so-called "red zones." These are areas the United Nations has designated as highly dangerous, said Jean Roussele, another Canadian police officer working in Haiti.
Canadian police officers normally don't go into these areas without helmets, bulletproof vests and a military escort travelling in armoured vehicles, Constable Roussele said.
He said the slum is rife with well-armed chimères, the gangs once supported by former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "They haven't tried to target us for kidnappings but they try to intimidate us," he said.
In Windsor, Ont., Prime Minister Paul Martin expressed his regrets to the family.
Canada condemns this senseless act of violence," he said. "We are profoundly saddened by the loss of a fellow Canadian who served his country with distinction both at home and abroad."
Mr. Bourque was a sergeant when he retired in 2002 from the Mounties. He had served on numerous high-profile investigations, former RCMP chief superintendent Ben Soave said, and was known for his innovative approaches to tackling organized crime.
Retired Crown attorney Yves Berthiaume remembered Mr. Bourque as a blunt, uncompromising man who wasn't afraid to confront people.
He recalled Mr. Bourque telling defence lawyers that he could charge some of them with a new law on proceeds of crime.
Another time he confronted Antonio Lamer, then a judge on the Supreme Court, about the court's 1985 refusal to hear a case about police powers to seize alleged profits of crime from bank accounts. Mr. Bourque was enraged and years later, as a police officer escorting by then chief justice Lamer, he challenged the magistrate about it.
"I don't know too many police officers who would have done that," Mr. Berthiaume said.
Mr. Bourque's work was pivotal in uncovering the operations of the Cuntrera-Caruana clan, the money launderers of the Mafia. But later in his career he was unhappy to be reassigned to VIP protection.
He felt frustrated, said Antonio Nicaso, a crime reporter who had interviewed him for a book about the mob. Mr. Bourque hoped his work in Haiti would be a way to make himself valuable again.
"I want to do something that has meaning because I believe that the last few years in the RCMP I didn't feel very useful," Mr. Bourque wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Nicaso in September before leaving for Haiti.
The UN mission -- known as MINUSTAH, a French acronym for United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti -- has helped stabilize some parts of the city since arriving in June of last year.
Violence and kidnappings in Haiti have increased as the Jan. 8 election draws near. But diplomatic sources told The Globe and Mail that yesterday's killing should not be seen as a sign of more violence specifically against foreigners.
"In general, the security has improved in the last year but there is still insecurity concentrated in Cité Soleil and surroundings. The main threat is the level of kidnappings," a Western diplomat said. "The chances of getting kidnapped in there are high. No one goes in without an armoured vehicle. We don't know what happened here. Did he miss a sign? Take a wrong turn? Try to fight off kidnappers?"
A government spokeswoman in Ottawa said that Mr. Bourque died while on duty but had no information about what specifically he was doing when he was attacked. Kim Girtel, who had served with the Canadian diplomatic mission to Haiti, said that there are not enough armoured vehicles and that they are typically doled out to people performing the most dangerous tasks.
Presidential elections in Haiti, the first since Mr. Aristide fled the country nearly two years ago, have been postponed three times. Haiti remains one of the poorest countries in the world and receives the most amount of Canadian aid of any country in the Americas.

Ex-Mountie took on the Mafia

By TU THANH HA AND MARINA JIMÉNEZ

Wednesday, December 21, 2005 Posted at 9:37 AM EST

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

He was supposed to fly home yesterday to visit his family for the holidays. Instead, a government jet brought the body of Mark Bourque, a veteran crime fighter who died on duty with the United Nations in Haiti, back to Canada last night.
Mr. Bourque, a retired RCMP officer, was not a household name, but he made crucial contributions to law enforcement during his career, and was a tenacious detective who took on a major Mafia cartel.
He was one of 25 retired officers Canada assigned to the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti to provide security before an election in January, joining 100 Canadian police officers already in the troubled country as advisers and trainers.
Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew called yesterday for an investigation into Mr. Bourque's death. "We need to identify the perpetrators of that crime and, of course, they need to be taken to justice through the courts," he said
Mr. Bourque was shot near the capital, Port-au-Prince, as he drove an unmarked UN vehicle from the coastal city of Les Cayes where he was stationed.
He was taking the car to be repaired when he stopped near a checkpoint operated by Jordanian peacekeepers on the edge of Cité Soleil, a notoriously violent slum. It is unclear whether Mr. Bourque was hit by a stray bullet or whether he was caught in a shootout.
UN officials have suggested he could have been the victim of a botched kidnapping.
Before he went to Haiti, Mr. Bourque was instrumental in uncovering the financial operations of the powerful Cuntrera-Caruana clan, Mafia money launderers.
And another case Mr. Bourque handled went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and was a factor in nudging Parliament into adopting legislation to fight money laundering, said retired Crown attorney Yves Berthiaume.
Mr. Bourque leaves a large legacy, Mr. Berthiaume said. "He was quite a character, a special man."
He had an idealistic side, said one former colleague, Sergeant Mike Roussy. He had the habit, when he arrested drug dealers, of trying to reason with them in an attempt to lure them back to an honest life.
Sgt. Roussy witnessed several occasions when the drug squad had arrested dealers and left them handcuffed to search their houses. Mr. Bourque would be in the kitchen, debating with the suspects.
"They looked kind of surprised, amazed," Sgt. Roussy recalled. "For most of us, it was business as usual. Mark, he was like a social worker."
Sgt. Roussy said Mr. Bourque also was skilled at the little-known, but essential, art of writing unimpeachable, persuasive affidavits. These documents are used to persuade judges to grant search warrants and wiretap authorizations, key tools when fighting the mob.
But it was with his investigation of the Cuntrera-Caruana clan that Mr. Bourque made his most significant contribution.
"He was the first to recognize the importance of this group on this side of the Atlantic," said Antonio Nicaso, the author of a book about the Cuntrera-Caruanas.
The case began after police intercepted 58 kilos of heroin hidden in furniture shipped to Montreal. One of the suspects arrested was Gerlando Caruana, whose luxurious home in a Montreal suburb tweaked Mr. Bourque's suspicions.
Checking Mr. Caruana's bank, Mr. Bourque was told by a teller that he should also look into the suspect's brother, Alfonso, who had an account through which millions of dollars were frequently transferred to Switzerland. For years, Mr. Bourque investigated, poring over thousands of pages of financial documents and visiting banks from Cyprus to Switzerland to Milan. He discovered that Montreal was a major money-laundering hub.
But Canadian laws against money laundering were non-existent, and prosecutors were reluctant to indict the Caruanas on drug charges. "They just said they wouldn't do it, so it was thrown in the garbage," Mr. Bourque said years later in an interview with CTV.
However, what he uncovered has been extensively used in Italian courts, Mr. Nicaso said. "Mark's work was more appreciated abroad than in Canada."
A francophone from Saskatchewan, Mr. Bourque spent his entire career in Quebec. His wife, Lise, was a civilian RCMP employee; they settled after his retirement in Stoneham, near Quebec City.