Michel François while taking millions in bribes from Colombian drug lords. François denied the charges and stayed in a Honduran prison until July, 1997, when the Honduran Supreme Court turned down U.S. extradition efforts for lack of evidence and subsequently released François. Michel François Joseph-Michel François was a colonel in the Haitian army. As Haiti Chief of National Police he participated in the 1991 Haitian coup d'état, which overthrew Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Former Haitian President candidate Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly is known to have associated with François. François attended US command school at Fort Bragg. He helped topple Haiti's elected
Michel Martelly called compas, the only music allowed under the Duvaliers." After the 1991 Haitian coup d'état saw the expulsion of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, "Martelly opened a Pétion-Ville club called the Garage, where he entertained many of the coup's main architects, including the much-feared chief of national police, Michel François, later convicted in absentia for massacring Aristide supporters." Martelly has been heralded as a pioneer of a unique genre of compas, a style of Haitian dance music sung predominantly in the Haitian Creole language. Originally, compas, was the creation of Nemours Jean-Baptiste. Martelly, a keyboardist and the self-proclaimed "President of Compas," popularized a