Two men are believed to be Haiti Americans-one of whom was allegedly a former bodyguard of the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince-was suspected of Assassinate Haitian officials said Thursday about news about the Haitian president.
James Solages and Joseph Vincent were among the 17 suspects who were unscrupulously killed by gunmen at the home of President Jovenel Moïse just hours before dawn on Wednesday. One. According to Leon Charles, head of the Haitian National Police, 15 of them were from Colombia. He added that three other suspects were shot dead by the police and eight others were at large. Charles earlier said that seven people were killed.
“We will bring them to justice,” he said at a press conference on Thursday night when 17 suspects were handcuffed and sat on the floor.
According to a document shared by Haitian Election Minister Matthias Pierre, the oldest suspect is 55 years old and the youngest Sorach is 35 years old.
He will not provide more details about the background of Solages, nor will he provide the name of the second Haitian American. The US State Department said it was aware of reports that Haitian Americans were detained, but could not confirm or comment.
Solages describes himself as a “certified diplomatic agent,” an advocate for children, and an up-and-coming politician on the charity website he established in southern Florida in 2019 to help residents.
Solages stated on the profile page he created for the charity that he had previously worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti, and the page has been taken down along with the rest of the website.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Department of Global Affairs told Global News on Thursday that officials were aware of the allegations against Solages and that he “temporarily served as a back-up bodyguard in 2010 by a security company hired by the Canadian Department of Global Affairs.”
The spokesperson stated that the company has not been employed in Haiti since 2010, “because another company was awarded the contract.” No further details were provided.
Calls to the foundation and Solages’ colleagues at the charity organization either didn’t get through or were unanswered.
Witnesses said that a group of people found two suspects in the bushes of Port-au-Prince on Thursday. Some of them grabbed their shirts and pants, pushed them, and occasionally slapped them.
An Associated Press reporter said that the police arrested the two men, who were sweating profusely and wearing clothes that appeared to be covered in mud. The police put them behind a pickup truck, and as the crowd chased them to a nearby police station, they drove away.
Once there, someone in the crowd chanted: “They killed the President! Give them to us. We are going to burn them!”
Someone overheard a man saying that it is unacceptable for foreigners to come to Haiti to kill the country’s leaders. He was referring to reports from Haitian officials that the perpetrators spoke Spanish or English.
The crowd later set fire to several abandoned cars full of bullet holes, which they believed belonged to white suspects. These cars have no license plates, and one of them contains an empty bullet box and some water.
At a press conference on Thursday, Police Chief Charles urged people to stay calm and let the police do their jobs because he warned that the authorities needed evidence they were destroying, including burned cars.
The officials did not explain the motive for the killing, only that the attack, condemned by the main opposition party in Haiti and the international community, was carried out by “a well-trained and heavily armed group.”
Not everyone agrees with the government’s description of the attack. When Robenson Geffrard, a Haitian journalist who wrote and hosted a radio program for a local newspaper, tweeted a report about the police chief’s comments, it caused a lot of skeptical responses. Many people want to know how the sophisticated attackers described by the police broke into Moïse’s home, security facilities, and panic room, and escaped unscathed, but were captured without a plan to escape successfully.
At the same time, according to a Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste, a Haitian judge involved in the investigation stated that Moise was shot a dozen times and his office and bedroom were looted. It quoted Judge Carl Henry Destein as saying that investigators found 5.56 and 7.62 mm cartridges between the porter and the inside of the house.
He 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.
When the interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, who took over the leadership of Haiti with the support of the police and the army, ordered the reopening of the international airport, he asked people to reopen and return to work.
On Wednesday, after Moyes was killed, Joseph promulgated a two-week siege, which shocked a country struggling to deal with some of the worst poverty, violence and political instability in the Western Hemisphere.
In a country where 60% of Haitians earn less than US$2 a day, as food and fuel become scarcer, inflation and gang violence are spiraling. After experiencing dictatorship and political turmoil, Haiti is still struggling to recover from the devastating earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and the situation is getting more and more serious.
“Now there is this emptiness, and they are afraid of what will happen to the people they love,” said Marlene Bastian, executive director of the Family Action Network movement, an organization that helps people in the Little Haitian community in Miami.
She called on the Biden administration to play a more active role in supporting the Haitian National Dialogue, aiming to hold free, fair and credible elections.
At the same time, the Security Council met on Thursday to discuss the situation in Haiti. The UN special envoy Helen Lalem told reporters at the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince that Haiti has requested additional security assistance.
Haitian police are still in a gun battle with the attackers behind the president’s assassination
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.
Moise has faced large-scale protests in recent months, and the protests have become violent because opposition leaders and their supporters rejected his plan to hold a constitutional referendum and made proposals to strengthen the presidency.
According to the Haitian Constitution, Moise should be replaced by the President of the Supreme Court of Haiti, but the Chief Justice’s death due to COVID-19 in recent days left the question of who can legally replace the office.
At the same time, Joseph should be replaced by neurosurgeon Ariel Henry, who was appointed prime minister by Moise the day before the assassination.
Henry told the Associated Press that he was the prime minister, calling this a special and confusing situation. “I am the current prime minister,” he said.
On Thursday, public transportation and street vendors are still scarce, which is an unusual sight for the usually bustling streets of Port-au-Prince.
39-year-old Marco Destin is walking to visit his family because there is no bus, which is called tap-taps. He brought them a loaf of bread because they had not left the house since the president was killed for fear of their lives.
“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.”
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.
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 really an explosive situation,” he said, adding that it is possible for foreign countries to intervene with a UN-type military presence.
“Whether Claude Joseph can continue to be in power is a big question. If he does not create a national unity government, it will be difficult to do so.”
Coto reports from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Goodman reports from Miami. Pierre-Richard Luxama, an AP cameraman based in Port-au-Prince, contributed to this report.
© 2021 Canadian Press
