He also added that Mr. Phillippe had “won over the people.”

Mr. Philippe, 48, is a former police and military official with a poor human rights record. In 2004, he staged an invasion of his home country in a successful quest to force out the president at the time, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

A year after the rebellion, he was secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in the United States that accused him of running drugs from Colombia out of Haiti, and laundering money. Each time United States authorities were close to apprehending him, someone would tip Mr. Philippe off; a 2007 mission launched from Guantánamo Bay involving Black Hawk helicopters flopped.

Despite being a fugitive whose face was posted on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s website, Mr. Philippe had recently been elected to the Haitian Senate. In an October interview with The New York Times, he maintained that the Americans could find him if they wanted to, as he was in plain sight.

In his hometown, Pestel, he would draw dozens of well-wishers when he walked the streets. The town itself is isolated, hours from any city in a road riddled with boulders and difficult for law enforcement to access, particularly if lookouts were trying to stop them.

“I’m not hiding. I just want my justice,” he said days after a hurricane had wrecked the town. “The thing is, they have no evidence against me. And they know they don’t have any evidence against me. And they know that I know they don’t have any evidence against me.”

Gary Desrosiers, a deputy spokesman for the Haitian National Police, said the arrest operation involved thorough surveillance by the police, and insisted that no American agents were present at the arrest.

“This was an operation led by the Haitian police,” he said.

Mr. Philippe had not yet been sworn into the Senate, which gave authorities a small window to apprehend him before he would have immunity from prosecution.