Presidency wanted of an assassination suspect in Haiti: the police

• Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was shot dead by a group of assailants at his home last week.
• Haitian police said on Sunday they had arrested one of the masterminds for the attack.
• They said the man, a doctor from Florida, wanted to take over the presidency and hire the hitmen as guards.

The man suspected of instigating the plot to assassinate the Haitian leader wanted to steal the presidency for himself and hire the killers as bodyguards, police said.

President Jovenel Moïse was shot dead in his room in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday. Haitian police said 28 people carried out the attack and as of Monday 21 people had been arrested in connection with it, Reuters reported.

On Sunday, Leon Charles, the country’s police chief, announced that officers had arrested a man suspected of being one of the masterminds of the operation, the Associated Press reported.

Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old man of Haitian descent who worked as a doctor in Florida, flew to Haiti on a private jet in early June with “political objectives,” Charles said, according to the Washington Post .

Some of the men involved in the assassination joined him on the plane, Charles said.

Charles said Sanon planned to steal the presidency from Moses and wanted to hire the hitmen to be his personal bodyguards, The Post reported.

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Charles said that at Sanon’s home in Haiti, police found a hat with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration logo on it, 20 boxes of bullets, gun parts, four car license plates. the Dominican Republic and two cars, the AP reported.

Videos suggest the assassins posed as DEA members before killing Moses, the Miami Herald reported.

The men were initially hired to travel to Haiti to protect Sanon, but their orders quickly changed to arrest Moïse, Charles said.

Two Haitian Americans arrested in connection with the murder told authorities the group’s intention was not to kill Moses but to arrest him and take him to the presidential palace, the Miami Herald and Reuters reported.

The couple said they were translators for the Colombian commando unit and had an arrest warrant for Moses but was dead by the time they arrived, a source told Reuters. It was not clear who issued the warrant and how the men would have obtained it.

After Moses died, who was shot 12 times, one of the suspects called Sanon to update him, Charles said.

Charles added that two other people, whom he did not name, were also believed to be behind the plot.

In a 2011 YouTube video titled “Leadership for Haiti,” Sanon criticized Haiti’s political elite. “They don’t care about the country,” he said. “They don’t care about people.”

Haiti asked the United States to send troops to help stabilize the country; the United States is “analyzing” whether it should do so, a Pentagon spokesman said on Sunday. Senior FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials arrived in Haiti on Sunday to discuss how the United States could help, The Post reported.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told “Fox News Sunday” that the United States is considering its options.

“We are analyzing it, as we would any other request for assistance here at the Pentagon,” he said. “It is under review.”