Bogota/Port-au-Prince, July 9 (Reuters)-The United States and Colombia said on Friday that they would send law enforcement and intelligence officials to assist Haiti after some of their nationals were arrested for the brutal assassination of President Jovenel Moise.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a team of gunmen assassinated Mois at his home in Port-au-Prince, which put Haiti in a deeper predicament. Political crisis This may exacerbate hunger, gang violence and COVID-19 outbreaks.
Former bodyguard of the Canadian Embassy is related to the assassination of the President of Haiti
Haitian police stated that the assassination was carried out by a commando composed of 26 Colombians and 2 Haitian American mercenaries. The two Haitian Americans are identified as 35-year-old James Solach and 55-year-old Joseph Vincent, both of whom are from Florida.
After a gun battle with the Haitian authorities in Petionville, a hillside suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince where Mois lived, 17 people were arrested, including Soragi and Vincent.
According to Haitian police, three others were killed and eight are still at large. They said that the authorities are looking for the mastermind of the operation.
A judge investigating the case told Reuters that Moise was found lying on his back on the bedroom floor, with 12 gunshot wounds on his body and having his left eye pushed in. The front door of the house was full of bullet holes and was forcibly opened, while the other rooms were looted.
“He was full of bullets,” Petionville Court Judge Carl Henry Destein said. “There is a lot of blood around the body and on the stairs.”
The White House said the United States promised on Thursday to send senior officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to Haiti to assess the situation and see what they can best help.
Two sources from U.S. law enforcement agencies who did not wish to be named stated that relevant agencies are investigating the U.S. The connection with the killing.
A State Department spokesperson said: “We are aware of the arrest of two U.S. citizens in Haiti and are closely monitoring the situation. For privacy reasons, we have no further comment.”
Haitian police are still in a gun battle with the attackers behind the president’s assassination
Colombian President Ivan Duque said on Friday that the director of Colombia’s National Intelligence Agency and National Police Intelligence Agency will also travel to Haiti with Interpol to assist in the investigation.
Duke wrote on Twitter: “We provide all possible help to find out the truth about the material and intellectual perpetrators of the assassination,” he said he had just spoken with Haiti’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph.
Haitian officials did not explain the motive of Moise’s killing, nor did they explain how the assassin passed his security personnel. Since taking office in 2017, he has been facing massive protests against his rule-first because of corruption allegations and his management of the economy, and then his increasing control of power.
Moise himself has spoken of the dark forces behind the unrest: other politicians and corrupt oligarchs believe that his attempts to clean up government contracts and reform Haitian politics are against their interests.
General Luis Fernando Navarro, commander of the Colombian armed forces, told reporters on Friday that Colombian investigators found that between 2018 and 2020, 17 suspects had retired from the Colombian army.
The Commissioner of the Colombian National Police, Jorge Luis Vargas, said that preliminary investigations revealed that 11 Colombian suspects travelled to Haiti through the resort city of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island with Haiti. Paniola Island.
Vargas said that the other two flew to Panama by plane, and then flew to the Dominican capital Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.
Confusion about political control
In Haiti, the government declared a 15-day state of emergency on Wednesday to help the authorities arrest the killer, but has since urged companies to reopen.
Grocery stores, gas stations and commercial banks reopened on Friday, although the streets are still quiet, with only a few vendors selling things.
More than a thousand people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince on Friday after rumors that the U.S. might provide people with asylum.
“I have been there since noon, hoping to get asylum like everyone else,” said a woman outside the embassy who declined to be named.
The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The murder of Moise caused confusion about who is now the legal leader of this country of 11 million people, the poorest country in the Americas.
André Michel, a Haitian opposition politician, said: “The assassination… has created a political and institutional vacuum at the highest level of the country.” “There is no constitutional provision for this particular situation.”
The 1987 Constitution stipulated that the President of the Supreme Court should take over. But no one currently holds this role. After the postponement of elections in 2019, there is also no parliament.
Just this week, Moise appointed a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to succeed Joseph, even though he had not been sworn in when the president was killed.
Joseph seems to be in control of the situation, but Henry, who is more optimistic by the opposition, told the Haitian newspaper Xinpao that he does not think Joseph is a legitimate prime minister.
(Luis Jaime Acosta reported in Bogota, Andre Paultre reported in Bogota, Julia Symmes Cobb reported in Bogota, Brad Brooks reported in Tamarac, Daphne Psaledakis, and Mark Hosenball in Washington, and Estelov Estailove St-Val writing in Port-au-Prince by Sarah Marsh and Julia Sims Cobb, edited by Daniel Flynn and Rosaba O’Brien)
