Haiti: what has happened with the investigation of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse?

This past weekend marked the month of the assassination of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, which occurred on July 7, when a group of mercenaries entered his private residence in Port-au-Prince.

To date, the country and the international community still do not know who ordered this assassination; And, although in the first days a lot of information was provided about the operations and arrests, in recent weeks these have waned and very little is known about the progress of the investigations.

At the moment, more than 40 people have been arrested in the case, among them 18 former Colombian soldiers, a Haitian businessman based in Florida (US) and 20 policemen from the Antillean country, including several presidential security agents, explains the journalist Edgar Romero in a report for RT.

Who gave the order to assassinate the president of Haiti?

The Haitian Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, and the widow of the murdered president, Martine Moïse, have told the international press that the main perpetrators of the assassination have not yet been arrested; therefore, they consider that clear information on the ‘sponsors’ and motives for the crime has not yet been given.

The most famous names, so far, as the intellectual authors of the murder are Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old Haitian doctor, living in Florida; Joseph Félix Badio, former official of the Haitian Ministry of Justice; and Ashkard Joseph Pierre, a businessman who resides in Montreal (Canada), where he works in the commercial area of the Haitian consulate.

Sanon, who aspired to be the country’s president, was arrested in the first days after the assassination. About this suspect, the head of the Haitian National Police, Léon Charles, said: «He came in June in a private plane with political objectives and contacted a private security company to recruit the people who carried out the act».

About Badio, the information was provided by the director of the Colombian National Police, Jorge Luis Vargas, who assured that days before the assassination, this former Haitian official had ordered the mercenaries to assassinate the president of Haiti, although previously, he had said the mission was to arrest him.

About Joseph Pierre, the Haitian Police issued a search warrant. This man would be Sanon’s business partner.

The company that ‘got the contract’

The private security company CTU Security (registered as Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy LLC) was hired for Moïse’s murder, said Charles.

This company is based in Doral Beach, Miami (USA) and is directed by the Venezuelan opponent Antonio Enmanuel Intriago Valera.

Vargas commented that the initial meetings to plan the crime were held in Miami; while Charles pointed out that the crime was planned during a meeting in a hotel in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Both the director of the Haitian and the Colombian police have said that CTU Security workers participated in those meetings, as well as Intriago, Sanon, the former Colombian military officer Duberney Capador and James Solages, a Haitian-American citizen who had surrendered to Haitian police authorities after the criminal actions.

The mercenaries

Capador and another former Colombian military man, identified as Germán Rivera, were in charge of planning the operation and presumably acted as recruiters for the rest of the mercenaries who participated.

Vargas reported that initially four people traveled to Haiti from late April and May, stayed in a hotel, and then another 20 citizens, who arrived in the Caribbean country in June, were contacted.

«These people initially stay in a hotel, provide security services in groups of seven, for several weeks», explained the head of the Colombian Police. According to his version, this group later settled in a house near that of the Haitian president, where they carried out «criminal training tasks».

Regarding logistics costs, he said that Rivera had received $ 50,000 from the US to organize the trip; and that through the company Worldwide Capital, owned by the Ecuadorian citizen Walter Veintimilla, «tickets from Miami were purchased for the entry of the rest of the people who would join the group that had already been in place since May (in Haiti)».

Likewise, Rivera received money transfers, through the Western Union shipping company, «to coordinate food and logistics expenses while he was already in Port-au-Prince, Haiti».

After the assassination, Capador was killed, along with two other Colombians, while Rivera was arrested.

From a redevelopment project to assassination

Last week, through his lawyers in Miami, Intriago gave his version of events and said he was «a victim of a scheme to assume power in Haiti».

According to his statement, CTU Security was hired to provide security for a «humanitarian» infrastructure project in Haiti, specifically talking about a supposed redevelopment plan in the coastal city of Jacmel, in the south of the country.

Later, Intriago was informed that the security mission had «changed direction» and that now, the hired Colombians, who according to him are not mercenaries, would accompany a judge and the Haitian police to deliver an arrest warrant to the president.

What the defendants have not yet made clear is how the ‘arrest plan’ turned into an assassination. According to what the Colombian Police has reported, Badio was the one who gave the order to Capador and Rivera to go from arrest to murder.

However, according to Intriago’s version, those hired by his company did not kill Moïse. “When they entered the presidential residence, they found the deceased president, his injured wife and the house ransacked. We believe that the president’s own bodyguards betrayed him», said his lawyers.

On Monday of this week, the Colombian vice president and foreign minister, Marta Lucía Ramírez, said, after a meeting with the Haitian ambassador Jean Mary Exil, that «there cannot be impunity» in this case, but that they will not allow «the international image of Colombia linked to the image of a land of mercenaries».

The version of the former first lady of Haiti

On the day of the murder, Martine Moïse was injured. She was transferred to Florida for treatment, she returned to Haiti for her husband’s funeral and returned to the US to continue medical procedures.

According to her, she and her husband were sleeping when the first shots were heard in the residence, which woke them and made them get up.

The former first lady went to wake up her children, over 20 years old, and she told them to hide in a bathroom. Meanwhile, she said that her husband had called two senior officers in charge of her security, but that the mercenaries had already entered the house, presumably without any impediment.

According to the story, the then president told his wife to lie down: «There I think you will be safe», the widow recalled, noting that they were the last words she heard from her husband before he died.

A flurry of shots entered her room and she was hit in the hand and elbow. After that she stayed still on the floor. «I felt like I was choking, because she had blood in her mouth and she couldn’t breathe», she recalled.

According to the version of the murdered president’s wife, she heard the mercenaries talking – although none of them spoke Creole or French – and searching the room for something. Then the killers left. «When they left, they thought I was dead».

For the former Haitian first lady «only the oligarchs and the system could kill him».

Request for help from the UN for Haiti

At the end of July, Haitian judges of peace and judicial secretaries involved in the investigations into the assassination reported that they had received death threats.

Last week, the Haitian Government requested assistance from the United Nations (UN) to carry out an investigation in this case, which is considered by Foreign Minister Claude Joseph as «an international crime» for «the presumption of participation of foreign citizens in the planning, financing and implementation of the attack».

The request was made by the Haitian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a letter sent to the organization’s secretary general, António Guterres, according to the Haitian Embassy in the Dominican Republic.

“The assistance requested from the international organization will consist, on the one hand, in the creation of an international commission of inquiry in support of the work of the national bodies and, on the other, in the creation of the special court for the prosecution of the allegedly guilty», says the statement.

A similar request was also sent to the Caribbean Community (Caricom), in a letter addressed to Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, a country that currently holds the pro tempore presidency of Caricom.

Haitians in Cali

Meanwhile, hundreds of Haitians have traveled to Colombia, concentrating on Cali, according to the mayor’s office of that city. The situation is not new, since the town is frequented in transit to other countries, but the flow of migrants has increased after the murder of Moïse.

“For some years now, groups of Haitian migrants have been passing through our country bound for the US, this was a relatively controlled situation with small numbers until a couple of weeks ago when the president of Haiti was assassinated. All this situation of political instability in that country has led to a huge increase in the number of migrants trying to cross our border», said Ivanov Russi, manager of Mi Terminal Calí.