In the days after Haiti President Jovenel Moïse was brazenly shot to death in his hillside home above Port-au-Prince more than four years ago, federal agents fanned out across South Florida in search of a connection.
They served search warrants at the homes and businesses of four individuals: two operators of a Miami-Dade security firm that hired the former Colombian soldiers accused of the killing, a Broward businessman who had allegedly financed their airline tickets, and a Tampa man who shipped ballistic vests to Haiti.
The FBI case agent assigned to the assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, testified Monday in Miami federal court that he never dusted for fingerprints or swabbed for DNA at the crime scene more than four years ago.
“We did the best we could while we were at the residence, but timing was a factor,” FBI special agent Martin Suarez said.
Haitian President Jovenel Moïse died from a gunshot to the heart after his body had already been riddled with bullets during the brazen July 7, 2021, attack on his home, Haiti’s top forensic expert testified Thursday in Miami federal court.
Wearing a black dress, the wife of Haiti’s slain president immediately began to sob on Tuesday as the U.S. government’s star witness testified against four South Florida men standing trial on charges of conspiring to kill her husband more than four years ago at the couple’s home outside Port-au-Prince.
“I am Martine Moïse, I am Mrs. Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated at our house,” she testified in Miami federal court, as she burst into tears in mid-sentence.
The smell of gunpowder hung in the air as Haitian police opened fire with .50-caliber rifles, trapping a group of Colombian commandos not far from the hillside house where President Jovenel Moïse had just been assassinated.
As Sgt. Edwin Blanquicet Rodríguez, an American-trained soldier who spent 21 years in the Colombian army, tried to find refuge, he could hear an injured fellow soldier inside a house pleading for his life.
“We could hear him begging to please not kill him,” Blanquicet said.
Then came footsteps, followed by a gunshot.
Le Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies tiendra lundi 19 octobre une séance publique consacrée à Haïti, suivie de consultations à huis clos, avec au programme la dégradation de la situation sécuritaire, le déploiement de la Force de répression des gangs (GSF) et les incertitudes entourant l’organisation des prochaines élections.
Selon Security Council Report, publié le 16 octobre, trois responsables onusiens sont susceptibles de présenter un état des lieux : Carlos Ruiz Massieu, représentant spécial du secrétaire général et chef du Bureau intégré des Nations unies en Haïti (BINUH) ; Jack Christofides, représentant spécial pour la GSF ; et Daniela Kroslak, secrétaire générale adjointe et cheffe du Bureau de soutien des Nations unies en Haïti (UNSOH), dont la participation au briefing reste possible.
Former Haitian President Michel Martelly has registered to run for the presidency of the Caribbean nation, joining a growing list of candidates hoping to lead a troubled Haiti despite facing sanctions from the United States, Canada and the European Union — or in the case of the former singer, all three.
Martelly’s name was among 16 listed Friday on the Provisional Electoral Council’s website as having preliminary registered to run. The list also includes another former president, Jocelerme Privert, and a former member of the lower house of Parliament, Gary Bodeau. Privert who oversaw the country’s last general elections in 2016, has been sanctioned by Canada. Bodeau has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department under a federal act that targets perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption, and faces Canadian sanctions as well.
Prince would not disclose the annual fee he receives for work with the Task Force, claiming only that it is a “fraction” of the cost of the short-lived Multinational Security Support mission — an initiative backed financially and logistically by the United States, that once envisaged 5,500 foreign police in Port-au-Prince.
“Our cost is one-sixth of what their annual camp cost was,” Prince said. The sum is likely in the tens of millions of dollars.
His income will be augmented by a deal to help control Haiti’s porous border with the Dominican Republic for the next 10 years in return for 10% of any new customs revenue collected. The long-term contract has raised criticism locally of how Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé is using his mandate as interim leader.
Les États-Unis ont annoncé, le 15 octobre, plus de 340 millions de dollars de nouveaux engagements financiers en faveur des Caraïbes, destinés notamment à la sécurité portuaire, au renforcement des forces de l’ordre, aux infrastructures numériques et aux capacités sanitaires. Derrière cette enveloppe régionale, Haïti occupe une place particulière : lors de l’ouverture du Dialogue États-Unis-Caraïbes, le vice-secrétaire d’État américain Christopher Landau a directement évoqué les armes acheminées vers le territoire haïtien depuis les États-Unis et les démarches entreprises par Washington pour tenter d’endiguer ces flux.