Haitian The interim government has asked the United States and the United Nations to deploy troops to protect critical infrastructure as it tries to stabilize the country and prepare for elections after the general election. President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated and killed.
The astonishing demand for U.S. military support is reminiscent of the riots that followed the last assassination of a president in Haiti in 1915, when angry mobs dragged President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam out of the French embassy. Beaten to death. In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Haiti to defend the US military occupation that lasted for nearly 20 years as a way to avoid anarchy.
Haitian election minister Matthias Pierre defended the government’s request for military assistance. He said in an interview with the Associated Press on Saturday that the local police force is weak and lacks resources.
“What are we doing? Will we throw the country into chaos? Destruction of private property? People killed after the president was assassinated? Or, as a government, will we prevent it?” he said. “We are not asking to occupy this country. We are asking small troops to assist and help us. … As long as we are weak, I think we will need our neighbors.”
According to an unnamed US official, the request has been received, but no decision has been made because he has no right to discuss the matter publicly. But so far, the Biden administration has not indicated that it will send troops.
Currently, it only plans to send FBI officials to help investigate a criminal activity that plunged Haiti, a country ravaged by poverty and gang violence, into a destabilizing power struggle and a constitutional deadlock.
UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhanhak said on Saturday that Haiti also wrote to the UN requesting assistance. According to a UN source who asked not to be named, the letter requested military and security guarantees at key facilities because the details of the letter are confidential.
“We definitely need help, and we have sought help from our international partners,” Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph told the Associated Press in a telephone interview late on Friday. “We believe that our partners can assist the national police in solving problems.”
On Friday, a group of lawmakers announced that they recognized Haiti’s disbanded Senate Speaker Joseph Lambert as the interim president and directly challenged the authority of the interim government. They also acknowledged Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who Moise chose to succeed Joseph the day before Joseph was killed, but he has not yet taken office or formed a government.
One of the lawmakers, Rosemond Pradel, told the Associated Press that Joseph “has neither the qualifications nor the legal right” to lead the country.
Joseph expressed disappointment that others tried to use Moise’s murder for political gain.
“I’m not interested in power struggles,” said Joseph, who holds a leadership position with the support of the police and the army. “In Haiti, there is only one way for people to become president. That is through elections.”
At the same time, more details about an increasingly obscure international conspiracy surfaced: a gunfight between gunmen and hiding in foreign embassies, a private security company operating in a Miami warehouse, and cameo sightings by Hollywood stars.
Among those arrested were two Haitian Americans, one of whom worked with Sean Penn after the devastating earthquake in the United States in 2010. The police also detained or killed more than a dozen former Colombian soldiers.
Some suspects were captured during a raid on the Taiwanese Embassy, where they are believed to have taken refuge. National Police Chief Léon Charles said that the other eight suspects are still at large and are being wanted.
The attack at Moise’s home before dawn on Wednesday also severely injured his wife, who was airlifted to Miami for surgery. She issued a statement on Saturday, implying that the president was killed for trying to develop the country. “The mercenaries who assassinated the president are currently in prison,” she said in Creole, “but other mercenaries currently want to kill his dreams, visions and ideologies.”
Colombian officials said these people were recruited by four companies and travelled to Haiti via the Dominican Republic. Colombian soldiers trained by the United States are often recruited by security companies and mercenaries in conflict zones because of their extensive experience in decades of war with left-wing insurgents and drug cartels.
The sister of one of the deceased suspects, Duberney Capador (Duberney Capador), told the Associated Press that the last time she spoke with her brother was late Wednesday, a few days after the murder of Mois. Hours-at the time these people were hiding at home and surrounded, desperately trying to discuss the way out of the gunfight.
“He told me not to tell our mother so she wouldn’t worry,” Yenny Capador said, holding back tears.
It is not clear who planned the attack. The question still remains, that is, how the perpetrator can pretend to be an agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration and break into the presidential residence, almost without resistance from those responsible for protecting the president.
Cappado said that her brother retired from the Colombian army in 2019 with the rank of sergeant and was hired by a private security company because he knew he would provide protection to powerful people in Haiti.
Capador said that she knew almost nothing about employers, but shared a photo of her brother in uniform with the CTU Security logo printed on it. The company is located in Doral, a suburb of Miami, and is popular with Colombian immigrants.
The wife of Francisco Uribe among the arrested told Columbia’s W radio that CTU offered to pay these people $2,700 a month—a small amount of money for dangerous international missions. , But far more than the salaries of most people, non-commissioned officers and professionals. Soldiers, earn from their pensions.
Uribe is under investigation for allegedly murdering an unarmed civilian who was described as having been killed in battle in 2008, one of thousands of extrajudicial executions that shocked Colombia’s US-trained army more than a decade ago One.
CTU Security was registered in 2008 and listed as its president, Antonio Intriago. He is also affiliated with several other entities registered in Florida, some of which have been disbanded, including the Federal Academy of Counter-Terrorism Forces, the United States National Committee of Venezuela, and more Pull food company.
CTU’s website lists two addresses, one of which is a gray warehouse that was closed on Friday, and there is no indication of who it belongs to. The other is a small suite in a modern office building a few blocks away, named after a different company. A receptionist said that Intriago would come to collect emails and hold meetings every few days. Venezuelan Intriago did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
Cappado said: “We are the people most interested in clarifying what happened, so that my brother’s reputation will not be what it is now.” “He is a humble and hardworking man. He has honors and medals.”
In addition to Colombians, those detained by the police also included two Haitian Americans.
Investigating Judge Clément Noël told Le Nouvelliste that the arrested Americans James Solages and Joseph Vincent stated that the attackers only intended to arrest Moïse, not kill him. According to a report by the newspaper on Friday, Noel said Sorakis and Vincent were the translators for the attackers.
Solages, 35, described himself as a “certified diplomatic agent,” defending children and budding politicians on a now-deleted website. He founded a charity in southern Florida in 2019. To help the residents of Jacmel, his hometown in Haiti.
After a magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed 300,000 Haitians and left tens of thousands of people homeless, he worked briefly as a driver and bodyguard in a rescue organization established by the University of Pennsylvania. He also listed the Canadian Embassy in Haiti as a past employer. His now deactivated Facebook page has photos of armored military vehicles and photos of him in front of the American flag.
Colleagues calling the charity and Solages were unanswered. However, a relative in southern Florida said that Solakis had not received any military training and did not believe that he was involved in the killing.
Joseph declined to specify who was behind the attack, but said Moyes had won countless enemies when he attacked oligarchs who had profited from overly generous national contracts for years.
Former bodyguard of the Canadian Embassy in connection with the assassination of the Haitian President
Some of these elite insiders are now the focus of investigators, and the authorities have asked the presidential candidate and businessman Reginald Bloss and former Senate Speaker Yuri Latotu to meet with prosecutors for questioning next week. No further details were provided, and no one was charged.
Analysts say that the person who planned the shameless attack is likely to be connected to a gang that thrives in corruption and drug trafficking. In the last month alone, gangs continued to expand, burning and looting houses in Haiti in order to compete for territory, resulting in the displacement of more than 14,700 people.
Hundreds of Haitians gathered outside the US embassy in Port-au-Prince on Friday, begging to leave the country. The woman carried the baby, and the young man brandished his passport and ID card and shouted: “Refuge!” and “Help!”
“This country has nothing to offer,” said 36-year-old Thermidor Joam. “If the president can be killed with his own safety, if someone wants to kill me, I don’t have any protection.”
The prosecutor also wanted to interrogate members of Moïse’s security services, including security coordinator Jean Laguel Civil and Dimitri Hérard, head of general security services at the National Palace.
“If you are responsible for the safety of the president, where have you been?” Port-au-Prince prosecutor Bedford Crowder told the French newspaper Le Nouvelliste. “What did you do to avoid the president’s fate?”
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Goodman reports from Miami. Associated Press writer Evans Sanon and cameraman Pierre-Richard Luxama in Port-au-Prince, Astrid Suarez of Bogota, Colombia, and Edith M. Lay of the United Nations Dele and Trenton Daniel of New York contributed.
© 2021 Canadian Press
