Haiti The authorities arrested more people in the assassination President Jovenel Moïse, Raided the Taiwanese Embassy. It is believed that several suspects sought refuge. At the same time, two Haitian Americans and several former Colombian soldiers allegedly connected with the conspiracy were also detained.
According to Léon Charles, chief of the national police, a total of 17 suspects have been detained and 8 others are being wanted.
“We will bring them to justice,” the police chief said. At a press conference on Thursday, 17 suspects in handcuffs sat on the floor.
Before dawn on Wednesday, Moyes unscrupulously killed his wife at home, which also severely injured his wife and shocked a country already suffering from poverty, widespread violence and political instability.
The interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, who took office with the support of the police and the army, declared a two-week “state of martial law” and asked people to return to work and reopen businesses that were closed in the usually bustling Port-au-Prince. prince. He also ordered the reopening of the international airport.
The Colombian government stated that Haiti has asked it about the six suspects, including two of the three victims, and determined that they are retired members of the country’s military. It expresses full cooperation.
“A team of the best investigators,” said General Jorge Luis Vargas, the head of the Colombian police. “They send the date, flight time, and financial information they have collected to Port-au-Prince.”
Colombian soldiers trained by the United States are heavily recruited by private security companies in conflict zones around the world because of their extensive experience in decades of war with left-wing insurgents and powerful drug cartels.
The US State Department said it was aware of reports of Haitian Americans being detained, but declined to comment.
Solages, 35, described himself as a “certified diplomatic agent,” defending the coast for children and budding politicians on a now-deleted website.
Solages also said that he had worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. On the Facebook page that was also taken down after the news of his arrest, he showed photos of armored military vehicles and a photo of himself standing in front of a person. American flag.
The Canadian Ministry of Foreign Relations issued a statement without mentioning Sorach’s name, but stated that one of the men detained for allegedly participating in the murder had been “temporarily hired as a backup bodyguard for the Canadian Embassy” by a private contractor. He did not provide other details.
Calls to the charity and Solages colleagues at the charity were unanswered. However, a relative in southern Florida stated that Solakis had not received any military training and he did not believe he was involved in the assassination.
“I think my son killed my brother because I love my president and I love James Sorakis,” Schubert Dorism told WPLG in Miami that his wife is Sorakis’s Auntie.
At the same time, the Taiwanese Embassy in Port-au-Prince said that in the early hours of Thursday morning, Haitian police arrested 11 people who tried to break into the Taiwanese Embassy in Port-au-Prince. It did not provide details of their identities or the reason for the break-in, but in a statement it referred to these people as “mercenaries” and strongly condemned the “cruel and brutal assassination” of Moise.
“As for whether the suspect was involved in the assassination of the President of Haiti, this requires investigation by the Haitian police,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou told the Associated Press in Taipei.
When a Taiwanese diplomat was working from home, the embassy security issued an alert to the police. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that some doors and windows were broken, but there was no other damage.
Haiti is one of the few countries in the world that maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, rather than with the mainland Chinese government in Beijing.
In other parts of Port-au-Prince, witnesses said that a group of people found two suspects hiding in the bushes. Some grabbed their shirts and pants, pushed them, and occasionally slapped them. An Associated Press reporter saw the police put them behind a pickup truck and drove away when the crowd chased them to the police station.
“They killed the president! Give them to us! We are going to burn them,” the people chanted.
The crowd later set fire to several abandoned cars full of bullet holes, which they believed belonged to suspects. The car does not have a license plate, and inside is an empty bullet box and some water.
Charles urged people to stay calm and let his officials do their jobs. He warned that the authorities needed evidence of destruction, including burned cars.
The officials provided little information about the killing, only that the attack was carried out by “a well-trained and heavily armed group.”
Not everyone believes the government’s description of the attack. When the Haitian journalist Robenson Geffrard tweeted about the police chief’s comments, he drew a lot of suspicious responses. Many people want to know how the sophisticated attackers described by the authorities can be easily captured.
According to the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste, the judge involved in the investigation, Carl Henri Destin, said that Moise was shot a dozen times and his office and bedroom were looted.
The judge said that Moïse’s daughter Jomarlie Jovenel was hiding in her brother’s bedroom during the attack, and a maid and another worker were tied up by the attacker.
Haiti has become increasingly unstable under Mois’s rule, who has passed decree rule for more than a year and is facing violent protests as critics accuse him of trying to accumulate more while the opposition asks him to step down. More power.
The UN Security Council met in private on Thursday to discuss the situation in Haiti, and the UN special envoy Helen Lalem subsequently stated that Haitian officials had requested additional security assistance.
Hours after the shooting, the sound of the gunshots reverberated throughout the city intermittently. This is a stern reminder that in the last month alone, the power of these gangs continued to expand. When they burned and looted houses in the fight for territory, more than 14,700 people were burned and looted. Displaced.
Former bodyguard of the Canadian Embassy is related to the assassination of the President of Haiti
Marco Destin ventured to the streets to buy bread for his family because they had not left their home since the president was killed.
“Everyone in the family sleeps with one eye closed,” he said. “If the head of state is not protected, I won’t get any protection.”
Robert Falton, a Haitian political expert at the University of Virginia, said that gangs are a force that needs to be confronted, and it is uncertain whether Haitian security forces can implement a siege.
“This is a very explosive situation,” he said.
— Coto reports from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Goodman reports from Miami. The Associated Press photographer Pierre-Richard Luxama in Port-au-Prince and Johnson Lai in Taipei, Taiwan contributed.
© 2021 Canadian Press
