26 of the 28 suspected murderers are Colombians

The president was assassinated at his home in the early hours of the morning. He received 12 bullets, including one to the head. They would have tortured him. He had been locked in his home for months amid a political crisis that increasingly diminished his legitimacy and increased voices demanding his resignation.

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For the moment, according to the Haitian authorities, it is not known who paid the Colombian mercenaries to kill the president. But before a day had passed since the international nature of the assassination became known, details of the ex-serviceman who carried out it began to be known.

According to a BBC Mundo memo which is currently highlighted on its Spanish-language website, a key facet of the war in Colombia is that it has generated an industry of mercenaries. Coming from United States-funded anti-drug trafficking and anti-terrorism schemes, many of them have been involved in various international conflicts due to their great military skills and willingness to charge low salaries.

The President of Colombia, Ivan Duque, announced on Friday that he had ordered the director of the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI) and the intelligence director of the Colombian police to travel to Haiti to support investigations after learning that the military retired Colombians would have participated. . .

“I ordered the director of the DNI and the director of intelligence of the Colombian police to provide all the support and to travel in the coming hours, with the staff of Interpol Colombia, to Haiti to join the effort of the authorities sister nation, ”Duque announced on his Twitter account.

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The Colombian secretary for human rights of the CGT, Humberto Correa, exiled in Argentina, was among those who involuntarily tweeted this Friday: “Twenty-six assassins trained in the Colombian army assassinate the president of Haiti. These are the same people who are killing trade unionists and social leaders in Colombia. What will the narco-president (Iván) Duque say? What are the Castro-Chavistas? In another tweet, he added: “The Colombian army, a shameful school of hitmen and mercenaries.”

Who were?

On the morning of this Friday, the Colombian media gradually published the names, trajectories and photos of retired soldiers involved in the assassination.

In Bogotá, authorities confirmed that six of the suspected mercenaries were in the Colombian army.

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One of the detainees is Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín, a former soldier with elite training who left Bogotá on June 4 for the Dominican Republic with three other former members of the army.

Grosso Guarín, who El Tiempo newspaper describes as one of the “best prepared soldiers in the Colombian army”, was linked to the force until 2019, when he left or was expelled for non-cause. yet revealed.

The ex-soldier had received “special command training, with American instructors, and in 2013, he was assigned to the Urban Anti-Terrorism Special Forces Group,” El Tiempo explained.

Grosso Guarín traveled with his three companions to Punta Cana and on June 6, they entered Haitian territory through the Carrizal border post, El Tiempo and W Radio reported, citing ongoing legal investigations.

According to the BBC Mundo note, most of the former soldiers are around 40 years old, they served as soldiers, and as part of standard practice in the military as they could not be promoted, they retired young, less than two or three years old. since.

Eladio Uribe’s wife, another of the detainees, told W Radio that the former serviceman was a professional soldier for 20 years, retired in 2019 and received several military awards.

According to his wife’s account, Uribe was in the Dominican Republic hired by an alleged security company that would pay him US $ 3,000 per month.

“They didn’t tell them exactly where they were going to be taken (…) it was a job opportunity with an agency to look after the families of sheikhs,” he said.

Colombian media also highlighted the case of Manuel Antonio Grosso, a paratrooper and anti-guerrilla special forces member who posted photos on social media a week ago from the Dominican Republic.

He apparently crossed the border with Haiti the day before Moïse was assassinated.

Salaries in the Colombian army are, according to statements by former defense ministers, between 15 and 20% less than what a retiree abroad can receive for privately contracted operations.

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Security experts say the mercenary industry has undergone a change after the Twin Towers in New York City in 2001 and the start of the so-called “global war on terror”, which was in part waged by terrorists. private entrepreneurs.

After the Cold War, they argue, the United States was interested in outsourcing military interventions to small countries but with complex conflicts, in order to reduce the political impact of the sacrifice of American troops.

“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have allowed the private military industry to mature, with established mercenary networks and some good practices,” writes Sean McFate, an American expert on the subject.

The industry has led to the creation of companies such as Blackwater, a private military firm which State Department reports have trained Colombian military and paramilitaries in 2005.

McFate explains in one of his essays: “Other (countries) are imitating the American model and every day new private military groups emerge from countries like Russia, Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia. Their services are more robust than those of Blackwater, they offer greater fighting power and a willingness to work for the highest bidder with little respect for human rights. They are mercenaries in every sense of the word.

Colombia has entered the war on terrorism, which has been supported by the government of Álvaro Uribe, with already consolidated experience in the hiring and creation of private security companies.

In the 90s, the country relaxed the laws for the creation of this type of companies, to strengthen the groups which faced the guerrillas in the countryside.

“The dilemma for the country is not to choose whether or not to have rural security cooperatives,” then defense minister Fernando Botero Zea said. “The real choice is between allowing state-supervised cooperatives or having the uncontrolled development of self-defense groups and paramilitary groups created outside the law.”

The result, however, was a consolidation of the paramilitary armies.

But, in addition, Colombia was already the main ally of the United States in the fight against drug trafficking, underlines BBC Mundo.

The famous Plan Colombia, a multi-million dollar drug trafficking program, has made the country the largest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. And that triggered the creation of private security companies in the country.

According to a 2011 report by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security, between 2005 and 2009, the federal government spent $ 3.1 billion on private contracts for anti-narcotics policies in Latin America, an increase of 32 % in four years.

And most of these companies were in Colombia.