Days before Jovenel Moïse was gunned down inside his house, the co-owner of a Doral-based security firm seeking regime change in Haiti in order to obtain contracts from the Haitian president’s successor issued three orders to a squad of Colombians tasked with storming the residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
From Miami, Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, who ran Counter Terrorist Federal Academy, instructed the former Colombian soldiers, whom he had helped to recruit, to seize two cash-filled suitcases — describing them down to the exact color and location inside Moïse’s second-floor bedroom.
Pretel also instructed them to take “every document that was found on the president’s desk” and recover all electronics, including cameras, according to a former Colombian special forces soldier and commando co-leader, Germán Alejandro Rivera García, who was at the Haitian president’s home on the night he was killed nearly five years ago.
“The Colombians took money from the president’s residence” as instructed, Rivera testified at the Miami federal trial of Pretel and three others accused of conspiring to kidnap and kill Moïse. Rivera, 47, who has pleaded guilty in the case, was the prosecution’s fourth cooperating witness as the trial completed its sixth week and resumed Monday.
Asked how the team knew the layout of the president’s private residence, the retired Colombian army captain offered up one name: Joseph Félix Badio, a former government official in Moïse’s administration.
“Mr. Badio would give the green-light to give the attack on the presidential residence,” Rivera told jurors on Friday after being asked to elaborate on a message he had received from another defendant in the case, Haitian American handyman James Solages. “Mr. Badio was the person who provided intelligence.”
Charged in Haiti
Badio, who is imprisoned in Haiti, appeared before an investigative judge on Friday in Port-au-Prince, where a separate investigation into Moïse’s slaying is ongoing. Badio was charged in Haiti along with 50 other people, including the former first lady, Martine Moïse, and dozens of police officers in charge of protecting the president.
Despite being a key suspect in Haiti in the assassination and having U.S. connections — he has a New York state driver’s license and owns a home in New York that defense lawyers say was paid off after the assassination — Badio is not among the 11 people charged by U.S. authorities in the conspiracy case in Miami.
His absence from the Miami case remains an issue as prosecutors and defense lawyers question witnesses about his role in the president’s assassination on July 7, 2021. It is unclear why Badio was not charged with the 11 defendants, six of whom have pleaded guilty to the main conspiracy charge or to a lesser charge of smuggling ballistic vests to the Colombian commandos.
Rivera, who continued testifying Monday, placed Badio at the center of the plot — paying off presidential guards and providing weapons and logistical support after a previous failed attempt to seize Moïse and arrest him on June 19, 2021.
In Rivera’s statement filed with his plea agreement in 2023, U.S. authorities referred to Badio as an unnamed co-conspirator. According to the statement, Pretel, calling from Miami, “directed Rivera to follow the instructions of a co-conspirator,” Badio. The statement said Badio had been present at a meeting in Haiti about two weeks before Moïse’s death when it was decided the president would be killed.
Pretel “told us we should abide by Mr. Badio’s instructions,” Rivera told jurors, recalling orders after he and fellow Colombian and co-commando leader Duberney Capador Giraldo learned of the change in the plan.
Rivera said Pretel ordered him to attend a meeting with Badio after the original attempt to kidnap the president failed. An earlier witness in the trial said the effort to snatch Moise fell through because CTU was unable to get weapons and money to a rogue police group to do the job, and did not secure an airplane they planned to use to take Moïse out of Haiti.
Rivera testified he received the call from Pretel before arriving at the meeting location, the home of former Haitian Sen. Joseph Joël John.
“Mr. Badio was the new representative of CTU in Haiti,” Rivera said, recalling the conversation where he was told to follow his instructions. “In other words, Mr. Badio became my boss in Haiti.”
Change in plans
At John’s house, Rivera was joined by Solages, who also worked for CTU; Joseph Vincent, another Haitian American in the plot who has pleaded guilty, and Capador.
That’s when Badio delivered the news about the change in the plan: “Mr. Badio said that President Jovenel Moïse should be assassinated,” Rivera told jurors.
Surprised, Rivera said, he tried to remain calm. He then relayed the conversation to Pretel. Rivera said he and Capador informed the Colombians of the change in plan from a kidnapping to an assassination several days later.
One of the Colombian men, Victor Albeiro Pineda Cardona, asked Rivera and Capador whether the mission was legal.
“I responded… that the operation is legal because at all times [Mr. Pretel] presented Mr. Jovenel Moïse as a legitimate target who had an arrest warrant, who was a dictator in Haiti, who was a human rights violator, who had shut down the Supreme Court, who had shut down the Haitian Parliament and who wanted to remain in power,” Rivera testified.
Rivera said Pretel had always led him to believe that Moïse “was responsible for all the evils and sufferings of the Haitian people. For that reason, I told Mr. Pineda a group of Colombians would be justified in killing the president of Haiti.”
Assassination plot
By July 3, 2021, after multiple false starts, all 22 of the Colombian former soldiers understood that an attack was “going to take place on the presidential home with the objective of assassinating President Jovenel Moïse,” Rivera testified.
To support that account, prosecutor Andrew Briggs showed jurors a text message retrieved from the phone of one of the Colombian commandos making reference to the cash-filled suitcases.
Pretel had warned the group that the president “was armed and dangerous,” and the Colombians deployed on the night of July 6 prepared for a confrontation, Rivera said. According to previous testinomy in the case Moïse did have a weapon inside his bedroom. There has been no evidence to suggest that Moïse fired his weapon the night he was killed.
The other defendants on trial in the case are Antonio Intriago, a Venezuelan-American who ran Counter Terrorist Unit Security, which along with Pretel’s Counter Terrorist Federal Academy is collectively known as CTU; and Walter Veintemilla, an Ecuadorian American accused of helping finance the plot.
Rivera said he had little interaction with Veintemilla, but that Intriago was present in conversations he had with Pretel.
Still, on Monday, Intriago’s defense attorneys, Emmanuel Perez and Hector Flores, displayed July 4, 2021, text messages between Rivera and Pretel that suggested the two men agreed to leave Intriago in the dark about the upcoming “party” — code for the planned assassination of Moïse three days later.
“If you haven’t told Tony, leave it at that,” Pretel texted Rivera. “Let’s leave him alone.”
Rivera said he did not know who fired the fatal shots that killed Moïse and wounded his wife, Martine; two teams of Colombians had entered the president’s home while he and Capador remained outside near a tree, he testified.
Martine Moïse, who testified for the government on the opening day, told jurors that she heard two names inside the bedroom, “Jefe” and “Pipe,” as she lay on the floor of the bedroom after being shot.
Orders to kill all
Rivera said he had no intention of joining the mission the night of July 6 when the men gathered at the mountaintop house of convicted Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar, not far from the president’s home. He changed his mind, however, after hearing Solages tell the Colombians that everyone inside Moïse’s home was to be killed.
“Mr. Solages said that we should go to the president’s house and assassinate the president; assassinate the wife of the president, assassinate the children of the president, the grandmother and grandfather; assassinate the security guards, assassinate the dog, the cat and the parrot,” Rivera said, breaking down as he testified. “That all people in that house should die, that there was no one who was innocent.”
Rivera told jurors he then intervened, telling the Colombians that “we were not going to do” what Solages said.
“The objective we have is the president,” Rivera said he told his fellow Colombians.
Defense attorneys in the case say Moïse was already dead by the time the Colombians arrived, that the Colombians were set up and that the president had been killed by his own guards. Those guards, according to testimony in the Miami case and the Haitian investigation, were paid off by Badio.
Rivera testified that when the Colombian commandos arrived at the president’s home, Moïse’s guards threw down their weapons.
Prosecutors say any evidence that Moise was dead before the Colombians arrived at his home was planted by the defendants in the case.
Reported everything
Rivera said he reported “absolutely everything, every detail” to Pretel about his interactions with Badio, who wanted to replace Moïse with Haitian Superior Court Justice Windelle Coq Thélot.
The justice had been dismissed by Moïse in the months before the assassination, shortly after authorities said they had foiled a Feb. 7, 2021, coup attempt.
In the Haitian investigation, Badio has portrayed himself as a trusted ally of the president tasked with infiltrating the Feb. 7 plotters. He has publicly distanced himself from CTU and the assassination. However, in the days after Moïse was killed, Badio told an acquaintance that he was CTU’s lawyer in Haiti, the Miami Herald has learned.
Days later, Badio went into hiding. He was captured on Oct. 19, 2023, while shopping at a supermarket in Pétion-Ville.
Rivera testified that he did not know whether Pretel and Badio had been in direct contact. But once Badio entered the operation the plot took on a more coordinated, tactical precision, he testified.
The plan itself had several phases. One involved a group of Colombians accompanying Coq Thélot to the presidential palace after the attack so she could be sworn in as Haiti’s new president.
‘I could see the fear’
On the night of July 6 and the early hours of July 7, a convoy of six vehicles headed to the president’s home, Rivera testified. Badio was in the lead car with two Colombians, followed by Rivera in a second and the team tasked with entering the house in a third car.
Before the assassination, Badio had appeared nervous while speaking on the phone, Rivera said.. After Badio hung up, he turned to the group, which included two Haitian policemen and said: “It’s time. It should be easy.”
Rivera testified that after leaving Jaar’s mountaintop house, he temporarily lost sight of Badio, but caught up with him about a block from Moïse’s home
Badio got out of the vehicle he was in as the two Colombians with him pointed their weapons at Haitian police officers. Rivera said that as he got out of his car, Badio made an ominous request “for the Colombians to assassinate the six or eight Haitians who were on the ground.”
The two Colombians looked to Rivera for orders. He said he refused.
“I could see the fear of the Haitian police officers in their faces,” he said.
Asked about Badio’s reaction, Rivera said: “He got upset.”
During cross-examination on Monday, Rivera also disclosed for the first time that he was tortured by Haitian national police officers after his arrest in the death of Haiti’s president for a total of 29 days before his transfer with three other suspects to Miami in January 2023.
Photos shown to the jurors indicated that Rivera incurred injuries to his face, ribs, wrists, legs and feet while in custody in a jail at police headquarters in Port-au-Prince.
“I was beaten,” Rivera testified. “They tore out my nails, the toenails on my feet, by beating me. They hit me with a padlock. … I was handcuffed and hanging from a ceiling on a rope. I was put upside down, with my head in a soiled toilet.”
