Who killed the Haitian president? Guards under surveillance

Three days after the Haitian president was killed inside his home on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, it remains unclear who ordered and carried out the brazen coup.

But a convoluted thicket of possible plots has emerged – with some officials attributing the assassination of President Jovenel Moise to a team of well-armed foreign mercenaries and others suggesting palace guards may have been involved. Evidence also emerged that the guards and suspected mercenaries could have worked in tandem – or that the guards or someone else could have prepared the aliens to take the fall.

As authorities continued to investigate the murky circumstances surrounding Wednesday morning’s murder, Haiti’s constitutional crisis worsened on Saturday, with several politicians fighting for control of the impoverished country and a faction calling on the United States to deploy troops on the island to ensure stability.

Amid the turmoil, some Haitians cautiously returned to the streets after days of cowering inside.

Fear remains widespread, said Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in the capital, Port-au-Prince. But so does the need to earn money and buy food. “People are shocked,” he said. “But they are focused on survival.”

Occupying the western third of the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic, Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, with less than $ 3 of survival per day on average.

Over the past decades, the former French colony has been besieged by hurricanes, earthquakes, disease, dictatorships and a series of foreign interventions that many say have only fueled instability. current.

Even before Moses was killed, the country was plunged into a series of criminal, political and health crises.

An epidemic of gang violence fueled by guns imported from the United States has forced thousands of residents to flee. The COVID-19 pandemic was raging, but no vaccine dose had been distributed.

And Moise, who took office in 2017 after a disputed vote, had ruled by executive order, despite a legal consensus that his term expired in February. He had since refused to hold an election, leaving Parliament with just 10 members, too few for a quorum.

Haitians had taken to the streets several times in mass protests calling for his resignation. Yet most were horrified to wake up on Wednesday morning to learn that Moise had been killed and his wife, Martine, injured in an attack on their home in an affluent suburb of the capital.

Martine Moise, who is recovering in a Miami hospital, described the siege in an audio recording posted on his Twitter account on Saturday.

“In the blink of an eye, mercenaries came to my house and riddled my husband with bullets,” she said, her voice weak. “After 25 years of marriage, they took my husband away from me.”

This account was supported by the head of the national police of Haiti and the interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who declared himself master of Haiti after the murder. They blamed a group of foreigners detained as a result of the attack – two Haitian Americans and at least 18 Colombians.

The Colombian suspects had been recruited to travel to Haiti by security companies, and most of them were former members of the country’s armed forces, according to the Colombian police director. It is common for former soldiers from the country, well trained in counterinsurgency after decades of battling drug traffickers and guerrilla groups, to work for security companies in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world.

A Haitian judge who interviewed the detained men told media that the Colombians said they were recruited by a Florida company to provide security for powerful Haitian families, and the two Haitian American men were hired to work as interpreters.

One of the Haitian Americans told the judge that the commandos had come down to the president’s home to arrest him, not to kill him, and by their arrival on Wednesday, Moise was already dead.

Meanwhile, new evidence indicates that the president’s own security team may have been involved in the coup.

For one thing, none of the president’s guards were reported injured in the attack. And documents published by Colombian magazine Semana show that palace guard Dimitri Herard visited Colombia several times in the months leading up to the murder, suggesting he may have been involved in recruiting suspected mercenaries.

In Haiti, some have speculated that Herard either collaborated with the foreigners in the murder or pushed them to take responsibility for the murder, possibly on the orders of a member of the government.

“The president was assassinated by his own guards, not by the Colombians,” said Steven Benoit, a prominent opposition politician. Told Haitian radio Magik9 Friday.

Herard, who is under investigation by US officials suspected of arms trafficking, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy and Research, has been invited to appear for questioning by Haitian authorities along with other members of the president’s security. detail.

Joseph, Haiti’s self-proclaimed leader, has also come under renewed scrutiny, with a senior member of the political opposition accusing him of orchestrating a coup.

Joseph was appointed interim prime minister by Moise in April. The UN special envoy for Haiti recognizes his tenure and has said he will lead the nation until elections are held.

But at home, his leadership is challenged, with the remaining MPs demanding that he step down. They say Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s Senate, should take the presidency and Ariel Henry be confirmed as prime minister. Moise had appointed Henry, a neurosurgeon with little political experience, as Joseph’s replacement as prime minister two days before the assassination, but Henry had yet to be sworn in.

Joseph’s recent demand for US military intervention has heightened tensions.

“We have asked for help from our international partners,” Joseph told The Associated Press on Friday.

There is no indication that President Biden, who ordered the withdrawal of nearly all U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan after a two-decade war, will provide military assistance to Haiti, which could turn into another military quagmire.

Many Haitians and experts in the country so wish, saying that previous deployments of foreign forces in the country have contributed to the erosion of state power and the militarization of street gangs.

“A new deployment of foreign troops in Haiti would be a tragic mistake,” said Jake Johnston, expert on Haiti at the Center for Economic and Political Research.

What is needed, said Horace G. Campbell, professor of political science and African-American studies at Syracuse University, is for members of Haitian civil society to take the lead in finding a solution. to the current crisis with the support of neighboring Caribbean countries.

For too long, he said, Haiti has been a protectorate of foreign powers who have supported corrupt politicians and allowed crime and poverty to flourish.

“The Haitian people need space to create their own democratic spaces,” said Campbell. “The combination of oligarchs, arms traffickers and outside political forces has allowed the Haitian people to have very little say in all of this. “