Mys­ter­ies are not all the same lev­el of mys­te­ri­ous­ness. Some mys­ter­ies are dri­ven by a raw lack of infor­ma­tion. Oth­er mys­ter­ies are just con­found­ing and seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry. And then there’s the kind of mys­tery that was just described in the fol­low­ing Mia­mi Her­ald piece about the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the July 2021 assas­si­na­tion of Hait­ian pres­i­dent Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse. A mys­tery where we have no short­age of motives or sus­pects, along with no short­age of rea­sons to sus­pect the inves­ti­ga­tors may not be inter­est­ed in a full inves­ti­ga­tion. Because as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Mia­mi Her­ald arti­cle, the assas­si­na­tion of Haiti’s pres­i­dent was not sole­ly a Hait­ian affair. While Hait­ian elites were cer­tain­ly involved, it was an inter­na­tion­al effort involv­ing Colom­bian mer­ce­nar­ies and a plot hatched in South Flori­da. And as we’re also going to see, that plot involves mul­ti­ple fig­ures who are either cur­rent or for­mer DEA infor­mants and it’s the pres­ences of DEA infor­mants that has US inves­ti­ga­tors call­ing for the seal­ing of evi­dence relat­ed to the plot.

That’s the kind of mys­tery we’re look­ing at here. An appar­ent cov­er up mys­tery where it’s still a mys­tery as to what exact­ly is being cov­ered up. And while we don’t real­ly know what’s being cov­ered up here, it sure looks like the assas­si­na­tion of the Hait­ian pres­i­dent by a series of fig­ures con­nect­ed to drug traf­fick­ing, some of whom are DEA infor­mants, was at the heart of it.

Adding to the mys­tery is the fact that the actu­al­ly mil­i­tary oper­a­tion that result­ed in Moïse’s death was con­duct­ed under the guise of being a DEA oper­a­tion. That’s what the com­man­do teams declared as it was get­ting under­way. And then there’s the fact that assas­sins stole tens of mil­lions of dol­lars — which would sug­gest pres­i­dent Moïse was deeply involved with nar­cotics traf­fick­ing — and yet US inves­ti­ga­tors are not look­ing into drug-traf­fick­ing or relat­ed mon­ey as part of the probe. That’s the kind of mys­tery we’re look­ing at here. A mys­tery where the inves­ti­ga­tors appear to have an idea of what actu­al­ly hap­pened and would rather not turn over too many more rocks:

The Mia­mi Her­ald

How a South Flori­da plot to oust Haiti’s Jovenel Moi­se led to his mur­der

by Jacque­line Charles
Updat­ed Decem­ber 08, 2022 10:47 am

There is a say­ing: “In the heart of every Hait­ian, there’s a sleep­ing pres­i­dent.”

Hait­ian author­i­ties say that was cer­tain­ly true of Chris­t­ian Emmanuel Sanon, the man some already called “Pres­i­dent.” And he had devo­tees in South Flori­da — and Haiti — will­ing to help him achieve his vision.

Sanon, a Hait­ian-Amer­i­can preach­er and physi­cian who split his time between Flori­da and his home­land, became the cen­tral char­ac­ter around whom coa­lesced a plan to top­ple Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse and install him, Sanon, as leader. He held meet­ings in Port-au-Prince and at the Tow­er Club in down­town Fort Laud­erdale in ear­ly May 2021 with asso­ciates to go over an ambi­tious rede­vel­op­ment pro­gram to “save Haiti.” No hard evi­dence has been pre­sent­ed in sup­port of the insis­tence by Hait­ian police that his plan, his goal, involved an assas­si­na­tion.

But over sev­er­al months, a sprawl­ing array of char­ac­ters became entan­gled in a com­plex plot to get rid of Moïse. Among them: an ambi­tious Hait­ian Supreme Court jus­tice, a con­vict­ed drug traf­fick­er, an oust­ed Hait­ian cor­rup­tion fight­er, a well-known politi­cian, for­mer and cur­rent cops, an ex-Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion infor­mant and a cur­rent FBI infor­mant, two Doral, Flori­da-based secu­ri­ty firms, and for­mer Colom­bian fight­ers turned sol­diers of for­tune.

Amid dis­parate motives and seething grudges, mis­sion creep set in and the coup evolved into an assas­si­na­tion. U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors, who are con­duct­ing a probe par­al­lel to those in Haiti and Colom­bia, say it fol­lowed the fail­ure of a pre­cur­sor scheme to kid­nap Moïse on June 19, 2021. The mur­der was car­ried out in bloody fash­ion in the ear­ly morn­ing hours of July 7, 2021.

...

The fol­low­ing is believed to be the most com­pre­hen­sive pub­lished account­ing to date of Jovenel Moïse’s mur­der and the mys­tery sur­round­ing it — includ­ing how it wasn’t sup­posed to be a mur­der at all. It is based on inter­views, a 124-page Hait­ian police report, phone records and three U.S. indict­ments.

Chap­ter 1: A South Flori­da Plot

A Plan and a Promise

The mis­sion that led to the assas­si­na­tion of Moïse in a polit­i­cal­ly volatile Haiti involved a cast of shad­owy char­ac­ters con­nect­ed in some way to Chris­t­ian Emmanuel Sanon, 64, a fix­ture for more than two decades in South Flori­da, where he once filed for bank­rupt­cy. His bogus claims of U.S. gov­ern­ment back­ing were among many lies.

There is James Solages, 37, a main­te­nance direc­tor who quit his job in April 2021 at a ritzy Lan­tana, Flori­da-area senior-liv­ing cen­ter to work for one of the Doral secu­ri­ty firms aligned with Sanon’s efforts.

Solages, who had signed up with Counter Ter­ror­ist Unit Secu­ri­ty, or CTU, told peo­ple the com­pa­ny had a con­tract with the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince look­ing into the issuance of visas. It was a lie.

Then there is Joseph Vin­cent, 57, an ex-DEA infor­mant and like Solages a Hait­ian Amer­i­can. He was once arrest­ed and charged with fil­ing false infor­ma­tion on a U.S. pass­port appli­ca­tion. Mov­ing to Haiti sev­en months before the attack, he was in con­tact with sev­er­al sus­pects, includ­ing police offi­cers accused of dri­ving Colom­bian com­man­dos to the president’s house on the night of July 7.

Phone records exam­ined by the Mia­mi Her­ald show Vincent’s phone mak­ing calls to the offices of House For­eign Affairs Chair­man Gre­go­ry Meeks, D‑N.J., and mem­ber Andy Levin, D‑Mich., as the plot­ting unfold­ed. The two rep­re­sen­ta­tives were among a group of U.S. law­mak­ers call­ing for Moïse’s removal from office. Aides to Meeks and Levin say they have no records of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“Our office does not have a record of a call because no one left a voice­mail. How­ev­er, we were made aware by an out­side par­ty that a call by Mr. Vin­cent was made,” the aide to Levin said.

And then there is Sanon him­self. Months before the assas­si­na­tion, he sought to hire indi­vid­u­als with mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence through CTU to safe­guard him in Haiti at a month­ly rate of between $2,700 and $3,000 per com­man­do. A let­ter dat­ed May 29, 2021, was sent to the State Depart­ment urg­ing U.S. sup­port for him to pre­side over a three-year tran­si­tion in Haiti.

Among the sig­na­tures on the let­ter was that of the head of AYITI2054, a polit­i­cal par­ty con­nect­ed to Sanon, and Port-au-Prince lawyer Phénil Gor­don Désir. Désir, Hait­ian police say, was in reg­u­lar con­tact with Vin­cent and oth­er sus­pects up until the killing. He has not been arrest­ed, although a war­rant for his arrest in con­nec­tion to the assas­si­na­tion has been issued in Haiti.

The same month the State Depart­ment let­ter was sent, Sanon chaired the down­town Fort Laud­erdale meet­ing, billing it as a Haiti devel­op­ment dis­cus­sion. It took place at the Tow­er Club, a hub of the city’s busi­ness elite, and is a key mile­post in the Hait­ian police inves­ti­ga­tion. Atten­dees includ­ed sev­er­al of those who are either cur­rent­ly want­ed by police, already in cus­tody or have been ques­tioned as part of the par­al­lel U.S. inves­ti­ga­tion.

Among those present: Anto­nio “Tony” Intria­go, a Venezue­lan émi­gré and the own­er of CTU Secu­ri­ty. He was intro­duced to Sanon by Solages. Intria­go worked along­side his busi­ness part­ner, Arcán­gel Pre­tel Ortiz, to find Sanon his Colom­bian body­guards. Pre­tel oper­at­ed CTU Fed­er­al Acad­e­my LLC, a firm affil­i­at­ed with Intriago’s sim­i­lar­ly named secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny. He tapped a closed What­sApp group of for­mer Colom­bian sol­diers to hire for the Haiti mis­sion, a Colom­bian source who is part of the What­sApp group said. Pre­tel relayed his progress to Sanon and Solages in video meet­ings, where his name appeared as Gabriel Pérez.

A Colom­bian nation­al like the ex-sol­diers he recruit­ed, Pre­tel once tes­ti­fied in a car­tel case as an FBI infor­mant and was still work­ing for the agency at the time of the assas­si­na­tion, sev­er­al sources told the Her­ald. He has not been arrest­ed.

Intria­go also brought in Wal­ter Vein­temil­la of Mira­mar-based World­wide Cap­i­tal Lend­ing Group to help Sanon with financ­ing.

The plan, said a Vein­temil­la lawyer, was for World­wide to pro­vide Sanon with a loan to be used by Intria­go to help with the cost of secu­ri­ty. The mon­ey would be repaid with Hait­ian assets secured after Sanon became pres­i­dent by what the lawyer described as “a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er.”

Through their lawyers, Vein­temil­la and Intria­go both deny any involve­ment in the assas­si­na­tion. Nei­ther has been arrest­ed, although their offices have been searched by the FBI and Home­land Secu­ri­ty Inves­ti­ga­tions agents. Pre­tel has kept a low pro­file since the assas­si­na­tion, and he is like­ly stay­ing in South Flori­da. The source in the What­sApp group says Pre­tel, by virtue of his back­ground, was able to con­vince recruits that the U.S. gov­ern­ment was in on the recruit­ment effort. There is no evi­dence that he was oper­at­ing under the direc­tion of the FBI.

The for­mer Colom­bian sol­diers arrived in Port-au-Prince on June 6, 2021, from Bogotá via San­to Domin­go in the neigh­bor­ing Domini­can Repub­lic. They were greet­ed by Sanon, who had dis­em­barked days ear­li­er from a pri­vate jet, and Ashkard Pierre, a friend of the pas­tor, who is also the sub­ject of a want­ed poster, in con­nec­tion to the assas­si­na­tion, issued by Hait­ian police.

After the Colom­bians’ arrival, some of the Haiti sus­pects who joined forces with the Colom­bians worked to secure arms by con­tact­ing local gang lead­ers. The ini­tial plan was to “cap­ture” Moïse at the Port-au-Prince inter­na­tion­al air­port with the help of the Colom­bians and spir­it him away by plane.

Moïse, who returned from an offi­cial over­seas trip to Turkey accom­pa­nied by his wife and oth­ers, was unaware of what await­ed on his return to Haiti on June 19, 2021. The plan was abort­ed when the get­away plane nev­er arrived. Less than 10 days lat­er, on June 28, Solages trav­eled back to South Flori­da from Haiti bear­ing a let­ter dat­ed June 22, request­ing assis­tance from Intria­go, and promis­ing “immu­ni­ty, pro­tec­tion and secu­ri­ty.”

The let­ter bears a sig­na­ture of Haiti Supreme Court Jus­tice Windelle Coq Thélot and Dis­trict Attor­ney Ger­ald Nor­gaisse, who pre­vi­ous­ly told the Her­ald the sig­na­ture was not his. Hait­ian author­i­ties believe the sig­na­ture of Thélot is valid although she has also denied its authen­tic­i­ty. Moïse had fired Thélot — ille­gal­ly — months ear­li­er after her name emerged as a poten­tial pres­i­den­tial suc­ces­sor fol­low­ing an alleged Feb. 7 coup attempt. Thélot was known as “Dia­mante” or Dia­mond to the com­man­dos who would take part in the plot, accord­ing to Colom­bian and Hait­ian inves­ti­ga­tors.

Along with Sanon, Thélot was in the run­ning to replace Moïse in the event of his ouster, though she has denied involve­ment with any of the plot­ting. The prosecutor’s office in Port-au-Prince has issued an arrest war­rant for her in con­nec­tion with the assas­si­na­tion while Hait­ian police have issued a want­ed poster. U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors say in a crim­i­nal com­plaint that by the time Solages hand­ed over the let­ter dur­ing his return trip to Flori­da, cer­tain plot­ters had knowl­edge — or at least believed — that the plan was no longer to kid­nap the pres­i­dent but to kill him.

U.S. pros­e­cu­tors say that trip by Solages, who is referred to as “co-con­spir­a­tor #1” in the U.S. crim­i­nal case and returned to Haiti six days before the dead­ly attack, is a key fig­ure in their inves­ti­ga­tion because it high­lights that part of the plot that led to Moïse’s death was hatched in South Flori­da.

Chap­ter 2: The Assi­na­tion

‘The Pres­i­dent is Dead’

“Get ready,” the caller told retired Colom­bian Sgt. Edwin Blan­quicet Rodríguez.

It was to tell him to pre­pare. A police offi­cer was on the way to pick him up and escort him to where the oth­er com­man­dos were wait­ing. The mis­sion was a go. Ulti­mate des­ti­na­tion: Pèlerin 5, the neigh­bor­hood over­look­ing Port-au-Prince where Moïse had his per­son­al com­pound in a rent­ed mul­ti-sto­ry house.

It had become a sort of de fac­to pres­i­den­tial palace since the offi­cial res­i­dence, the two-sto­ry French Renais­sance-inspired Nation­al Palace, crum­bled in the 2010 earth­quake. Since then, tem­po­rary pres­i­den­tial offices have been at the old Casernes Dessalines, the for­mer army bar­racks, which dou­bled as a cell block for polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, who were once sent there to be tor­tured or killed.

Moïse had stopped going to the palace about two weeks before his death, sug­gest­ing that he feared for his life, said sev­er­al sources, includ­ing the Nation­al Human Rights Defense Net­work, which under­took an inves­ti­ga­tion into the attack.

Blanquicet was with Sanon along with oth­er for­mer Colom­bian sol­diers in the Del­mas 60 neigh­bor­hood of Port-au-Prince, where Sanon now lived and held polit­i­cal meet­ings at a pri­vate home belong­ing to a Mia­mi-based busi­ness­man and real estate devel­op­er. The would-be pres­i­dent had been kicked out of a local hotel for non­pay­ment. They had just fin­ished watch­ing Colom­bia lose to Argenti­na in the 9 p.m. soc­cer match when the instruc­tions came from the caller, iden­ti­fied by Blan­quicet only as “the boss.”

Across town, Joseph Vin­cent was in the Laboule 23 neigh­bor­hood when his phone rang. He was at a home con­trolled by busi­ness­man and con­vict­ed cocaine traf­fick­er Rodolphe n‘‘Dòdòf” Jaar. Like Vin­cent, he also was a for­mer DEA infor­mant.

Vincent’s caller was Joseph Félix Badio, who had been fired from the government’s anti-cor­rup­tion unit in May. Vin­cent lat­er told a Hait­ian judge that Badio called to say Moïse was home watch­ing soc­cer. For months, Badio had been spy­ing on the pres­i­dent, aid­ed by turn­coat agents in Moïse’s secu­ri­ty detail.

Also mon­i­tor­ing the president’s com­ings and goings was Marie Jude Gilbert Drag­on. Drag­on was a soft-spo­ken for­mer police com­mis­sion­er and one-time rebel leader who had helped oust an ear­li­er pres­i­dent, Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide, in a bloody 2004 coup. Drag­on kept tabs on Moïse’s where­abouts through one of his for­mer cops work­ing as Moïse’s back­up dri­ver, Jude Lau­rent.

Lau­rent is accused, in a judge’s report, of leav­ing the over­sized iron gates to Moïse’s front yard wide open after inform­ing Drag­on of the president’s pres­ence inside.

Drag­on and Badio would speak at least three times between 9 p.m. and 9:42 p.m. on July 6, the day before the assas­si­na­tion, accord­ing to phone records.

Those records show Badio to be in the hills of neigh­bor­ing Thomassin 31 and 38, min­utes away from Moïse’s home. Also in Thomassin were the drug traf­fick­er Jaar, and James Solages, who by then had been joined by fel­low Florid­i­an Vin­cent, accord­ing to calls traced back to their phones.

Jaar, now in U.S. cus­tody await­ing tri­al, would lat­er admit to dis­trib­ut­ing firearms and ammu­ni­tion and har­bor­ing some of the Colom­bians pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion.

The oper­a­tion got under way in earnest some­time after 12:42 a.m. July 7 as Vin­cent and Solages jumped in a vehi­cle with two of the Colom­bians. In front of them was anoth­er vehi­cle car­ry­ing two more Colom­bians and two Hait­ian police offi­cers. All were head­ed down the two-lane black­top moun­tain road from Thomassin to Moïse’s res­i­dence in Pèlerin 5.

Breach­ing at least three secu­ri­ty check­points with lit­tle resis­tance, the two vehi­cles approached the walled-off com­pound. The vehi­cles were bristling with assault rifles and ammu­ni­tion and had cloth­ing tags bear­ing the let­ters “DEA.” The bogus tags were sup­pos­ed­ly fash­ioned by the for­mer police com­mis­sion­er, Drag­on.

The four com­man­dos with Solages and Vin­cent were a small part of a Colom­bian con­tin­gent that num­bered 22 in all. They were divid­ed into teams. Key among them was the five-man Delta pen­e­tra­tion team, which was by then aware of the assas­si­na­tion plan, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors. Its task was to force its way into the president’s sec­ond-floor bed­room.

At about 1 a.m., shots were fired out­side the com­pound. Moïse’s 24-year-old daugh­ter, Jomar­lie, ran to the room of her younger broth­er, Jovenel Jr. The two hid in his bath­room.

“This is a oper­a­tion. This is a oper­a­tion. DEA. Every­body go go go,” Sanon’s South Flori­da asso­ciate Solages yelled in Eng­lish through a mega­phone, stand­ing along­side Vin­cent in the mid­dle of the dim­ly lit street. Then in Cre­ole, Solages warned every­one to get down and said “Pa tire!” — don’t shoot.

Grenades dropped from assault drones. A gun bat­tle erupt­ed between the Colom­bians and the president’s secu­ri­ty, but Moïse’s detail didn’t put up much of a fight. Offi­cers even­tu­al­ly retreat­ed, allow­ing the attack­ers to shoot their way in.

Upstairs in his bed­room, Moïse was in a pan­ic as the armed mer­ce­nar­ies pep­pered his front door and walls to gain access. His con­fer­ence room would be ran­sacked. Also his bed­room.

Phone records of Badio, the oust­ed anti-cor­rup­tion offi­cial, show his calls ping­ing the same cell tow­ers as Moïse’s fran­tic pleas for help. If Badio wasn’t in the house, he was at least on the scene.

Among the peo­ple he was in con­tact with: Cinéus Fran­cis Alex­is.

Report­ed­ly close to Supreme Court Jus­tice Coq Thélot, Alex­is had kept in fre­quent con­tact with Rodolphe Jaar, the con­vict­ed cocaine traf­fick­er, and ex-Sen. John Joël Joseph. Both Jaar and Joseph are accused of pro­vid­ing vehi­cles and weapons to the Colom­bians in advance of the hit, while Jaar also admit­ted to hous­ing them. On this night, though, Alex­is’ con­tact was Joseph Félix Badio, lead­ing police to describe Alex­is in their report as “an inter­locu­tor” — a go-between — in the plot and Badio as a lead­ing sus­pect.

The two men spoke more than a dozen times on July 6 and 7, includ­ing at least four calls in a span of 25 min­utes dur­ing the assault. As the calls occurred, Alex­is was dri­ving from the well-to-do sub­urb of Pétionville, pass­ing the land­mark Hexa­gon build­ing that hous­es the Brazil­ian Embassy, en route to the pres­i­den­tial palace. He arrived around 2:29 a.m., report­ed­ly with the inten­tion of installing Moïse’s even­tu­al replace­ment.

By the time the Colom­bian Blan­quicet arrived at Moïse’s res­i­dence in a sev­en-car motor­cade dri­ven by Hait­ian police offi­cers, Moïse’s guards were gone. Blan­quicet said he saw gun­shot flash­es com­ing from a room on the sec­ond floor, and four men flee­ing through a back door.

One Colom­bian who entered the house claimed he had found the pres­i­dent already shot and yelled: “The pres­i­dent is dead! The pres­i­dent is dead! Let’s get out of here! They laid a trap for us!”

Colom­bian squad leader Ger­man Ale­jan­dro Rivera Gar­cia, aka “Col. Mike,” emerged from inside the house.

Rivera took out his phone in front of Vin­cent and Solages. They saw a dig­i­tal image of the president’s corpse. Rivera made a call. “The pres­i­dent is dead,” he report­ed.

Chap­ter 3: The After­math
Miss­ing Mil­lions and Sur­veil­lance Cam­eras

“We are free now,” Mar­tine Moïse, the president’s wife, said to her chil­dren when offi­cers respond­ing to her husband’s calls for help arrived and she rec­og­nized one of them.

Jomar­lie and her broth­er had emerged from their hid­ing place. They had found their moth­er sit­ting near the stairs, in a blue T‑shirt and flo­ral skirt. Blood dripped down her right arm. She had been shot.

Bul­let cas­ings were every­where. The sur­veil­lance cam­eras had been torn out and bags of cash known to be at the president’s home were miss­ing.

Sev­er­al sources told the Mia­mi Her­ald that the amount of stolen mon­ey was poten­tial­ly in the tens of mil­lions of U.S. dol­lars, but that fig­ure has been dis­put­ed, at least by U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors. The for­mer sol­diers, who strug­gled to col­lect their promised pay dur­ing their time in Haiti, were sup­posed to take a cut of Moïse’s mon­ey and the rest was to go to the Hait­ian plot­ters. The Haitians were sup­posed to be part of a new gov­ern­ment, a source with knowl­edge of the Colom­bian inves­ti­ga­tion told the Her­ald, based on state­ments from Colom­bians in cus­tody in Haiti.

In an oth­er­wise detailed 124-page inves­tiga­tive report, Haiti Nation­al Police say only the attack­ers “stole large sums” along with the sur­veil­lance sys­tem. No fur­ther pre­ci­sion has been pro­vid­ed by police, except that the cash was hauled away in duf­fle bags, accord­ing to some of the Colom­bians inter­viewed.

The mon­ey haul has raised a red flag for some Haiti observers who won­der why a pres­i­dent would have such large quan­ti­ties of mon­ey stashed at his home, how he could have acquired it and specif­i­cal­ly whether it could have been the fruits of nar­co-traf­fick­ing or oth­er ille­gal activ­i­ties. But sev­er­al U.S. law enforce­ment sources say they’re not look­ing into drug-traf­fick­ing or the mon­ey as part of the probe.

Tur­moil, Arrests and Ques­tions

“Every­one get back in your cars. We need to leave now,” the Haiti Nation­al Police inspec­tor screamed.

The high-rank­ing Hait­ian offi­cer had received the fran­tic call for help from the pres­i­dent. Before he could ask ques­tions, he heard through the phone the assault rifle go off.

...

By the time they arrived in a three-car police con­voy, there were oth­er offi­cers on the road. Dim­itri Hérard, the head of Gen­er­al Secu­ri­ty Unit of the Nation­al Palace (USGPN), who had been called by both Moïse and secu­ri­ty coor­di­na­tor Jean Laguel Civ­il, was stand­ing in the mid­dle of the main road lead­ing to the turnoff to Moïse’s res­i­dence.

...

While Hérard’s offi­cers were the first line against an assault by assas­sins, the final lay­er of pro­tec­tion was the Pres­i­den­tial Secu­ri­ty Unit. Sev­en of the police offi­cers assigned to pro­tect Moïse that night were mem­bers of the unit and were, along with the USGPN, sup­posed to save the pres­i­dent in the event of an attack. Hérard’s loca­tion and behav­ior that night aroused sus­pi­cion among the respond­ing offi­cers.

As Hérard and his cam­ou­flaged team stayed in the mid­dle of the road, the police inspec­tor ncalled by Moïse moved with oth­er offi­cers to try and block any­one from exit­ing the neigh­bor­hood as one of the police vehi­cles attempt­ed to reach the front gate.

As that vehi­cle advanced toward the com­pound, some of the com­man­dos, dressed in white T‑shirts and armed with assault rifles and car­ry­ing mil­i­tary back­packs, point­ed guns at the police.

Offi­cers behind an unmarked police SUV tried to advance on foot. Hérard approached and told them to back off. Hérard is cur­rent­ly in jail in con­nec­tion with the assas­si­na­tion.

The police inspec­tor, in an unmarked car, shift­ed into reverse, head­ing back down the hill to the inter­sec­tion with the main road. After a stand­off between police and com­man­dos, the Colom­bians retreat­ed, allow­ing the inspec­tor to get to the front door. It was too late.

The inspec­tor found the wound­ed Mar­tine Moïse. Her hus­band was sprawled in a pool of blood. Even­tu­al­ly, more offi­cers arrived, fol­lowed by a jus­tice of the peace to doc­u­ment the haunt­ing scene: draw­ers pulled out, walls rid­dled with bul­let holes, bul­let cas­ings car­pet­ing the floor.

The Colom­bians and the two Hait­ian Amer­i­cans, Solages and Vin­cent, were by then on the run. Also gone was Badio, the fired for­mer gov­ern­ment offi­cial. Phone records show Badio got in touch with John Joël Joseph, the for­mer sen­a­tor whose name is also writ­ten as Joseph Joël John.

Lat­er that same morn­ing, Badio would call Ariel Hen­ry, the prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate, whose nom­i­na­tion for that post had qui­et­ly been made months before but had become pub­lic only two days pri­or. Badio, once under con­sid­er­a­tion by Moïse for inte­ri­or min­is­ter, would place two calls total­ing sev­en min­utes to Hen­ry hours after the assas­si­na­tion. Hen­ry would lat­er say he didn’t recall speak­ing to Badio.

The predawn attack threat­ened to plunge Haiti deep­er into tur­moil. It fanned fears of more polit­i­cal grid­lock and vio­lence as anger erupt­ed in a pop­u­la­tion that felt vio­lat­ed. Ques­tions lin­gered and still do: How did some­one man­age to get past the president’s secu­ri­ty check­points, includ­ing three lay­ers of pro­tec­tion? Who did this? Why?

Claude Joseph, the for­eign min­is­ter and act­ing prime min­is­ter at that time, declared a state of siege and imposed mar­tial law. Inter­na­tion­al air­ports were shut and the usu­al­ly porous bor­der with the Domini­can Repub­lic sealed.

Vin­cent and Solages, the men who along with Sanon had Flori­da ties, even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­dered after free­ing police offi­cers they held as hostages. Sanon’s where­abouts dur­ing the assault are not known, but he was lat­er arrest­ed. Oth­er sus­pects tried to hide in a two-sto­ry build­ing just off the high­way in Pèlerin 2. After police tracked them down, a bloody gun bat­tle ensued. A white pick­up burst into flames. Duber­ney Capador Giral­do, described by a Colom­bian source as the leader of the com­man­dos, was killed, along with two oth­er alleged mem­bers of the hit squad.

Eleven of the Colom­bians would seek refuge at the near­by Tai­wanese Embassy, only to end up under arrest. Two days after the killing, Blan­quicet was among oth­ers cap­tured. They were hog-tied and placed in the back of a pick­up truck by an angry mob in the Jalousie slum.

...

Today, there are 42 sus­pects impris­oned in Haiti, includ­ing 18 Colom­bians, the three Hait­ian Amer­i­cans and var­i­ous Haiti Nation­al Police offi­cers who were tasked with pro­tect­ing the pres­i­dent.

Drag­on, the for­mer police com­mis­sion­er who had spied on Moïse and who turned him­self in for ques­tion­ing after the assas­si­na­tion, died four months lat­er in cus­tody. COVID-19-relat­ed ill­ness was blamed.

Still on the lam are Badio, the fired cor­rup­tion fight­er, and the one they called “Dia­mante”: Supreme Court Jus­tice Windelle Coq Thélot.

Who Killed Moi­se?

U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors are build­ing the Hait­ian president’s assas­si­na­tion case around a cir­cle of play­ers, cor­re­spon­dence and cir­cum­stances that point to an alleged mur­der con­spir­a­cy with roots in South Flori­da, Haiti and pos­si­bly oth­er coun­tries, accord­ing to court records.

In the lat­est two-count indict­ment filed in Octo­ber, the three defen­dants held in Mia­mi are charged with “pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port or resources” between June 2021 and July 7, 2021, to car­ry out a “con­spir­a­cy to kill or kid­nap” the pres­i­dent of Haiti. All three have plead­ed not guilty and are sched­uled for tri­al in late March in Mia­mi fed­er­al court.

Moïse’s mur­der did not start off as an assas­si­na­tion, U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors say, but it obvi­ous­ly became one.

Why did the plan change? Who were the intel­lec­tu­al authors behind the brazen killing? And why was Moïse mur­dered? Those are among the endur­ing mys­ter­ies in this inter­na­tion­al who­dunit. The inves­ti­ga­tion in Haiti is on its fifth judge, and near­ly a year and a half lat­er none of those detained has been offi­cial­ly charged.

In the Unit­ed States, the case is mov­ing, albeit slow­ly. Rodolphe Jaar the drug traf­fick­er, for­mer Sen. John Joël Joseph and a Colom­bian, Mario Anto­nio Pala­cios Pala­cios, all agreed to be trans­ferred to the States after escap­ing to the Domini­can Repub­lic or Jamaica. Pala­cios told U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors that some co-con­spir­a­tors were informed on July 6 — the day before the assas­si­na­tion — that the plan was to kill Moïse.

This past July, a fed­er­al judge in Mia­mi grant­ed the request of pros­e­cu­tors to seal evi­dence about the work of for­mer — and pos­si­bly still active — U.S. gov­ern­ment infor­mants con­nect­ed to the plot. The pro­tec­tion of clas­si­fied evi­dence could affect what the pub­lic ulti­mate­ly learns about the assas­si­na­tion.

There is noth­ing to guar­an­tee that a pres­i­den­tial assas­si­na­tion in Haiti can­not hap­pen again. As head of state, Moïse had no short­age of polit­i­cal ene­mies. His chest-thump­ing, cas­cade of wor­ry­ing leg­is­la­tion dur­ing one-man rule, attacks on the pri­vate sec­tor, infight­ing and the grow­ing dis­trust with­in the PHTK polit­i­cal par­ty over his suc­ces­sor and own per­son­al involve­ment with cor­rupt indi­vid­u­als cre­at­ed a per­fect storm.

Just as there is no short­age of sus­pects, there is no dearth of motives. At the time of his death, Moïse was near­ing the end of his pres­i­den­tial term, accord­ing to his cal­cu­la­tion, and he faced the same uncer­tain future as every Hait­ian pres­i­dent before him: Would he be allowed to fin­ish peace­ful­ly? Would he be killed, impris­oned or exiled like more than 30 oth­ers who pre­ced­ed him?

Amid pres­sure from a June 8–10, 2021, Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States mis­sion on the dete­ri­o­rat­ing polit­i­cal cli­mate in Haiti, Moïse and his sup­port­ers knew the polit­i­cal ship was sink­ing. His choice of Hen­ry, 73, as prime min­is­ter was not wel­comed by all. In tap­ping the for­mer inte­ri­or min­is­ter, Moïse need­ed to issue a pres­i­den­tial order over­rid­ing a law that set a pre­req­ui­site for run­ning. That law required any­one who pre­vi­ous­ly man­aged pub­lic funds to get an audit cer­tifi­cate known as a “décharge” from Par­lia­ment clear­ing them of past mis­man­age­ment or cor­rup­tion.

Moïse’s exec­u­tive order opened the door not just for Hen­ry but for oth­er polit­i­cal fig­ures whose can­di­da­cies for pub­lic office had been stymied. Oth­ers were already lined up wait­ing for Moïse to pass the polit­i­cal torch.

“He said this deci­sion has death in it,” a for­mer sen­a­tor who spoke to the pres­i­dent recalled.

Hours after utter­ing those words, Moïse was mur­dered.

————

“How a South Flori­da plot to oust Haiti’s Jovenel Moi­se led to his mur­der” by Jacque­line Charles; The Mia­mi Her­ald; 12/08/2022

“The mis­sion that led to the assas­si­na­tion of Moïse in a polit­i­cal­ly volatile Haiti involved a cast of shad­owy char­ac­ters con­nect­ed in some way to Chris­t­ian Emmanuel Sanon, 64, a fix­ture for more than two decades in South Flori­da, where he once filed for bank­rupt­cy. His bogus claims of U.S. gov­ern­ment back­ing were among many lies.”

There’s a lot that remains a mys­tery about this lat­est Hait­ian coup plot. But it’s not an entire mys­tery. We know a num­ber of the peo­ple involved with devel­op­ing the scheme were asso­ciates of South Flori­da fig­ure Chris­t­ian Ammanuel Sanon. And a num­ber of these asso­ciates had a his­to­ry of work­ing with either the DEA or FBI, like ex-DEA infor­mant Joseph Vin­cent. We also know that Sanon was not only telling fel­low coup plot recruits that he has US gov­ern­ment-back­ing for his plan, but he was appar­ent­ly in direct con­tact with the US gov­ern­ment, includ­ing phone records to the offices of two mem­bers of Con­gress who had called for Moïse’s removal. That’s all part of the ongo­ing mys­tery over this coup plot. What was the US gov­ern­men­t’s role in all this? Or, if not a direct role, at least aware­ness of what was being planned? We still don’t real­ly have a sol­id grasp of what the US gov­ern­men­t’s role was in this whole thing. That’s all part of the mys­tery:

...
There is James Solages, 37, a main­te­nance direc­tor who quit his job in April 2021 at a ritzy Lan­tana, Flori­da-area senior-liv­ing cen­ter to work for one of the Doral secu­ri­ty firms aligned with Sanon’s efforts.

Solages, who had signed up with Counter Ter­ror­ist Unit Secu­ri­ty, or CTU, told peo­ple the com­pa­ny had a con­tract with the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince look­ing into the issuance of visas. It was a lie.

Then there is Joseph Vin­cent, 57, an ex-DEA infor­mant and like Solages a Hait­ian Amer­i­can. He was once arrest­ed and charged with fil­ing false infor­ma­tion on a U.S. pass­port appli­ca­tion. Mov­ing to Haiti sev­en months before the attack, he was in con­tact with sev­er­al sus­pects, includ­ing police offi­cers accused of dri­ving Colom­bian com­man­dos to the president’s house on the night of July 7.

Phone records exam­ined by the Mia­mi Her­ald show Vincent’s phone mak­ing calls to the offices of House For­eign Affairs Chair­man Gre­go­ry Meeks, D‑N.J., and mem­ber Andy Levin, D‑Mich., as the plot­ting unfold­ed. The two rep­re­sen­ta­tives were among a group of U.S. law­mak­ers call­ing for Moïse’s removal from office. Aides to Meeks and Levin say they have no records of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“Our office does not have a record of a call because no one left a voice­mail. How­ev­er, we were made aware by an out­side par­ty that a call by Mr. Vin­cent was made,” the aide to Levin said.

And then there is Sanon him­self. Months before the assas­si­na­tion, he sought to hire indi­vid­u­als with mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence through CTU to safe­guard him in Haiti at a month­ly rate of between $2,700 and $3,000 per com­man­do. A let­ter dat­ed May 29, 2021, was sent to the State Depart­ment urg­ing U.S. sup­port for him to pre­side over a three-year tran­si­tion in Haiti.
...

And while the ques­tions about the sup­port pro­vid­ed by the US gov­ern­ment, pas­sive or oth­er­wise, loom large in this sto­ry, there’s also the gen­er­al ques­tion of who else was involved giv­en the fact that the plot­ting appears to have tak­en place in South­ern Flori­da. The same month that Chris­t­ian Emmanuel Sanon wrote of the State Depart­ment plead­ing for help, he also chaired a Fort Laud­erdale “Haiti busi­ness devel­op­ment dis­cus­sion.” This is a com­pli­cat­ed con­spir­a­cy. On the sur­face, the con­spir­a­tors had the ears of both US elect­ed offi­cials and the South Flori­da busi­ness elite. What was the actu­al involve­ment of these groups? It large­ly remains a mys­tery:

...
The same month the State Depart­ment let­ter was sent, Sanon chaired the down­town Fort Laud­erdale meet­ing, billing it as a Haiti devel­op­ment dis­cus­sion. It took place at the Tow­er Club, a hub of the city’s busi­ness elite, and is a key mile­post in the Hait­ian police inves­ti­ga­tion. Atten­dees includ­ed sev­er­al of those who are either cur­rent­ly want­ed by police, already in cus­tody or have been ques­tioned as part of the par­al­lel U.S. inves­ti­ga­tion.

Among those present: Anto­nio “Tony” Intria­go, a Venezue­lan émi­gré and the own­er of CTU Secu­ri­ty. He was intro­duced to Sanon by Solages. Intria­go worked along­side his busi­ness part­ner, Arcán­gel Pre­tel Ortiz, to find Sanon his Colom­bian body­guards. Pre­tel oper­at­ed CTU Fed­er­al Acad­e­my LLC, a firm affil­i­at­ed with Intriago’s sim­i­lar­ly named secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny. He tapped a closed What­sApp group of for­mer Colom­bian sol­diers to hire for the Haiti mis­sion, a Colom­bian source who is part of the What­sApp group said. Pre­tel relayed his progress to Sanon and Solages in video meet­ings, where his name appeared as Gabriel Pérez.

A Colom­bian nation­al like the ex-sol­diers he recruit­ed, Pre­tel once tes­ti­fied in a car­tel case as an FBI infor­mant and was still work­ing for the agency at the time of the assas­si­na­tion, sev­er­al sources told the Her­ald. He has not been arrest­ed.

Intria­go also brought in Wal­ter Vein­temil­la of Mira­mar-based World­wide Cap­i­tal Lend­ing Group to help Sanon with financ­ing.

The plan, said a Vein­temil­la lawyer, was for World­wide to pro­vide Sanon with a loan to be used by Intria­go to help with the cost of secu­ri­ty. The mon­ey would be repaid with Hait­ian assets secured after Sanon became pres­i­dent by what the lawyer described as “a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er.”

Through their lawyers, Vein­temil­la and Intria­go both deny any involve­ment in the assas­si­na­tion. Nei­ther has been arrest­ed, although their offices have been searched by the FBI and Home­land Secu­ri­ty Inves­ti­ga­tions agents. Pre­tel has kept a low pro­file since the assas­si­na­tion, and he is like­ly stay­ing in South Flori­da. The source in the What­sApp group says Pre­tel, by virtue of his back­ground, was able to con­vince recruits that the U.S. gov­ern­ment was in on the recruit­ment effort. There is no evi­dence that he was oper­at­ing under the direc­tion of the FBI.

...

U.S. pros­e­cu­tors say that trip by Solages, who is referred to as “co-con­spir­a­tor #1” in the U.S. crim­i­nal case and returned to Haiti six days before the dead­ly attack, is a key fig­ure in their inves­ti­ga­tion because it high­lights that part of the plot that led to Moïse’s death was hatched in South Flori­da.
...

And as we can see, part of what makes also these ques­tions about the fig­ures involved in this plot is the fact that Joseph Vin­cent was hatch­ing this plan with fel­low DEA infor­mant Rodolphe ”Dòdòf” Jaar. It was at Jaar’s home where Vin­cent called none oth­er that an Joseph Félix Badio, who had been fired from the government’s anti-cor­rup­tion unit in May. Badio report­ed­ly pro­vid­ed Vin­cent with updates on Moïse’s where­abouts. And then there was Vin­cen­t’s con­tacts with for­mer police com­mis­sion­er and one-time rebel leader Marie Jude Gilbert Drag­on, who was also track­ing Moïse’s sta­tus. So Vin­cent was in con­tact with a num­ber of high lev­el Hait­ian gov­ern­ment fig­ures and doing so, in part, at the home of a con­vict­ed cocaine traf­fick­er:

...
Across town, Joseph Vin­cent was in the Laboule 23 neigh­bor­hood when his phone rang. He was at a home con­trolled by busi­ness­man and con­vict­ed cocaine traf­fick­er Rodolphe n‘‘Dòdòf” Jaar. Like Vin­cent, he also was a for­mer DEA infor­mant.

Vincent’s caller was Joseph Félix Badio, who had been fired from the government’s anti-cor­rup­tion unit in May. Vin­cent lat­er told a Hait­ian judge that Badio called to say Moïse was home watch­ing soc­cer. For months, Badio had been spy­ing on the pres­i­dent, aid­ed by turn­coat agents in Moïse’s secu­ri­ty detail.

Also mon­i­tor­ing the president’s com­ings and goings was Marie Jude Gilbert Drag­on. Drag­on was a soft-spo­ken for­mer police com­mis­sion­er and one-time rebel leader who had helped oust an ear­li­er pres­i­dent, Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide, in a bloody 2004 coup. Drag­on kept tabs on Moïse’s where­abouts through one of his for­mer cops work­ing as Moïse’s back­up dri­ver, Jude Lau­rent.

...

Jaar, now in U.S. cus­tody await­ing tri­al, would lat­er admit to dis­trib­ut­ing firearms and ammu­ni­tion and har­bor­ing some of the Colom­bians pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion.
...

And then there’s the oth­er major twist in this sto­ry: the appar­ent ini­tial plan was to just kid­nap Moïse at the Port-au-Prince inter­na­tion­al air­port with the help of the Colom­bian mer­ce­nar­ies and take him away by plane. A plan that was appar­ent­ly thwart­ed by the fact that the get­away plane nev­er arrive for the June 19, 2021, plot. Day’s lat­er, Solage trav­eled back to South Flori­da from Haiti bear­ing a let­ter dat­ed June 22, request­ing assis­tance from Intria­go, and promis­ing “immu­ni­ty, pro­tec­tion and secu­ri­ty.” That’s also part the con­text of this plot: The ini­tial Jun 19, 2021, kid­nap­ping plan did­n’t come to fruition, lead­ing to a much more extreme fol­lowup plan a few weeks lat­er:

...
After the Colom­bians’ arrival, some of the Haiti sus­pects who joined forces with the Colom­bians worked to secure arms by con­tact­ing local gang lead­ers. The ini­tial plan was to “cap­ture” Moïse at the Port-au-Prince inter­na­tion­al air­port with the help of the Colom­bians and spir­it him away by plane.

Moïse, who returned from an offi­cial over­seas trip to Turkey accom­pa­nied by his wife and oth­ers, was unaware of what await­ed on his return to Haiti on June 19, 2021. The plan was abort­ed when the get­away plane nev­er arrived. Less than 10 days lat­er, on June 28, Solages trav­eled back to South Flori­da from Haiti bear­ing a let­ter dat­ed June 22, request­ing assis­tance from Intria­go, and promis­ing “immu­ni­ty, pro­tec­tion and secu­ri­ty.”
...

Flash for­ward to the July 6/7 raid, and we find the oper­a­tion under­way under the appar­ent guise of a DEA oper­a­tion. And as phone records show, Joseph Félix Badio was not only on the scene of the assas­si­na­tion, but he was in con­tact with Cinéus Fran­cis Alex­is, a close con­tact of Rodolphe Jaar:

...
The oper­a­tion got under way in earnest some­time after 12:42 a.m. July 7 as Vin­cent and Solages jumped in a vehi­cle with two of the Colom­bians. In front of them was anoth­er vehi­cle car­ry­ing two more Colom­bians and two Hait­ian police offi­cers. All were head­ed down the two-lane black­top moun­tain road from Thomassin to Moïse’s res­i­dence in Pèlerin 5.

Breach­ing at least three secu­ri­ty check­points with lit­tle resis­tance, the two vehi­cles approached the walled-off com­pound. The vehi­cles were bristling with assault rifles and ammu­ni­tion and had cloth­ing tags bear­ing the let­ters “DEA.” The bogus tags were sup­pos­ed­ly fash­ioned by the for­mer police com­mis­sion­er, Drag­on.

The four com­man­dos with Solages and Vin­cent were a small part of a Colom­bian con­tin­gent that num­bered 22 in all. They were divid­ed into teams. Key among them was the five-man Delta pen­e­tra­tion team, which was by then aware of the assas­si­na­tion plan, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors. Its task was to force its way into the president’s sec­ond-floor bed­room.

At about 1 a.m., shots were fired out­side the com­pound. Moïse’s 24-year-old daugh­ter, Jomar­lie, ran to the room of her younger broth­er, Jovenel Jr. The two hid in his bath­room.

“This is a oper­a­tion. This is a oper­a­tion. DEA. Every­body go go go,” Sanon’s South Flori­da asso­ciate Solages yelled in Eng­lish through a mega­phone, stand­ing along­side Vin­cent in the mid­dle of the dim­ly lit street. Then in Cre­ole, Solages warned every­one to get down and said “Pa tire!” — don’t shoot.

...

Phone records of Badio, the oust­ed anti-cor­rup­tion offi­cial, show his calls ping­ing the same cell tow­ers as Moïse’s fran­tic pleas for help. If Badio wasn’t in the house, he was at least on the scene.

Among the peo­ple he was in con­tact with: Cinéus Fran­cis Alex­is.

Report­ed­ly close to Supreme Court Jus­tice Coq Thélot, Alex­is had kept in fre­quent con­tact with Rodolphe Jaar, the con­vict­ed cocaine traf­fick­er, and ex-Sen. John Joël Joseph. Both Jaar and Joseph are accused of pro­vid­ing vehi­cles and weapons to the Colom­bians in advance of the hit, while Jaar also admit­ted to hous­ing them. On this night, though, Alex­is’ con­tact was Joseph Félix Badio, lead­ing police to describe Alex­is in their report as “an inter­locu­tor” — a go-between — in the plot and Badio as a lead­ing sus­pect.

The two men spoke more than a dozen times on July 6 and 7, includ­ing at least four calls in a span of 25 min­utes dur­ing the assault. As the calls occurred, Alex­is was dri­ving from the well-to-do sub­urb of Pétionville, pass­ing the land­mark Hexa­gon build­ing that hous­es the Brazil­ian Embassy, en route to the pres­i­den­tial palace. He arrived around 2:29 a.m., report­ed­ly with the inten­tion of installing Moïse’s even­tu­al replace­ment.
...

In anoth­er twist to the mys­tery, we’re told by sev­er­al source that the amount of cash stolen dur­ing the oper­a­tion was in the tens of mil­lions of dol­lar. And that fig­ure has been dis­put­ed by US inves­ti­ga­tors. Was less stolen? Or more to the point, how would US inves­ti­ga­tors have a gen­er­al idea of how much mon­ey there was to steal in the first place?

...
Bul­let cas­ings were every­where. The sur­veil­lance cam­eras had been torn out and bags of cash known to be at the president’s home were miss­ing.

Sev­er­al sources told the Mia­mi Her­ald that the amount of stolen mon­ey was poten­tial­ly in the tens of mil­lions of U.S. dol­lars, but that fig­ure has been dis­put­ed, at least by U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors. The for­mer sol­diers, who strug­gled to col­lect their promised pay dur­ing their time in Haiti, were sup­posed to take a cut of Moïse’s mon­ey and the rest was to go to the Hait­ian plot­ters. The Haitians were sup­posed to be part of a new gov­ern­ment, a source with knowl­edge of the Colom­bian inves­ti­ga­tion told the Her­ald, based on state­ments from Colom­bians in cus­tody in Haiti.

In an oth­er­wise detailed 124-page inves­tiga­tive report, Haiti Nation­al Police say only the attack­ers “stole large sums” along with the sur­veil­lance sys­tem. No fur­ther pre­ci­sion has been pro­vid­ed by police, except that the cash was hauled away in duf­fle bags, accord­ing to some of the Colom­bians inter­viewed.

The mon­ey haul has raised a red flag for some Haiti observers who won­der why a pres­i­dent would have such large quan­ti­ties of mon­ey stashed at his home, how he could have acquired it and specif­i­cal­ly whether it could have been the fruits of nar­co-traf­fick­ing or oth­er ille­gal activ­i­ties. But sev­er­al U.S. law enforce­ment sources say they’re not look­ing into drug-traf­fick­ing or the mon­ey as part of the probe.
...

Anoth­er part of the con­text to keep in mind with all this is the fact that the OAS had with­drawn its sup­port for the Moïse gov­ern­ment not long before the ini­tial June 2021 kid­nap­ping plot. It’s the kind of detail that sug­gests Moïse had very few allies and a lot of ene­mies among West­ern hemi­sphere gov­ern­ments as the plot played out:

...
Just as there is no short­age of sus­pects, there is no dearth of motives. At the time of his death, Moïse was near­ing the end of his pres­i­den­tial term, accord­ing to his cal­cu­la­tion, and he faced the same uncer­tain future as every Hait­ian pres­i­dent before him: Would he be allowed to fin­ish peace­ful­ly? Would he be killed, impris­oned or exiled like more than 30 oth­ers who pre­ced­ed him?

Amid pres­sure from a June 8–10, 2021, Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States mis­sion on the dete­ri­o­rat­ing polit­i­cal cli­mate in Haiti, Moïse and his sup­port­ers knew the polit­i­cal ship was sink­ing. His choice of Hen­ry, 73, as prime min­is­ter was not wel­comed by all. In tap­ping the for­mer inte­ri­or min­is­ter, Moïse need­ed to issue a pres­i­den­tial order over­rid­ing a law that set a pre­req­ui­site for run­ning. That law required any­one who pre­vi­ous­ly man­aged pub­lic funds to get an audit cer­tifi­cate known as a “décharge” from Par­lia­ment clear­ing them of past mis­man­age­ment or cor­rup­tion.
...

And it’s that whole over­lap of South Flori­da busi­ness elites, drug traf­fick­ers, Hait­ian elites, and US gov­ern­ment offi­cials call­ing for Moïse’s removal that has to fac­tor into our inter­pre­ta­tion of the appar­ent US inves­ti­ga­tion into the coup plot. An inves­ti­ga­tion that has yet to charge any of the major play­ers and seems to view the events that unfold­ed as large­ly a botched kid­nap­ping plot that only mor­phed into a mur­der plot lat­er under the guid­ance of still-unknown mas­ter­minds. And in July of this year, a fed­er­al judge in Mia­mi grant­ed the request of US pros­e­cu­tors to seal evi­dence about the work of for­mer — and pos­si­bly still active — U.S. gov­ern­ment infor­mants con­nect­ed to the plot. So in an inves­ti­ga­tion cen­tered around of net­work of fig­ures with ties to Hait­ian drug traf­fick­ers, the US inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into this case are cov­er­ing the tracks of US infor­mants involved with Hat­ian drug traf­fick­ing. It’s the kind of detail that sug­gests a full inves­ti­ga­tion into this case isn’t allowed:

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U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors are build­ing the Hait­ian president’s assas­si­na­tion case around a cir­cle of play­ers, cor­re­spon­dence and cir­cum­stances that point to an alleged mur­der con­spir­a­cy with roots in South Flori­da, Haiti and pos­si­bly oth­er coun­tries, accord­ing to court records.

In the lat­est two-count indict­ment filed in Octo­ber, the three defen­dants held in Mia­mi are charged with “pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port or resources” between June 2021 and July 7, 2021, to car­ry out a “con­spir­a­cy to kill or kid­nap” the pres­i­dent of Haiti. All three have plead­ed not guilty and are sched­uled for tri­al in late March in Mia­mi fed­er­al court.

Moïse’s mur­der did not start off as an assas­si­na­tion, U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors say, but it obvi­ous­ly became one.

Why did the plan change? Who were the intel­lec­tu­al authors behind the brazen killing? And why was Moïse mur­dered? Those are among the endur­ing mys­ter­ies in this inter­na­tion­al who­dunit. The inves­ti­ga­tion in Haiti is on its fifth judge, and near­ly a year and a half lat­er none of those detained has been offi­cial­ly charged.

In the Unit­ed States, the case is mov­ing, albeit slow­ly. Rodolphe Jaar the drug traf­fick­er, for­mer Sen. John Joël Joseph and a Colom­bian, Mario Anto­nio Pala­cios Pala­cios, all agreed to be trans­ferred to the States after escap­ing to the Domini­can Repub­lic or Jamaica. Pala­cios told U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors that some co-con­spir­a­tors were informed on July 6 — the day before the assas­si­na­tion — that the plan was to kill Moïse.

This past July, a fed­er­al judge in Mia­mi grant­ed the request of pros­e­cu­tors to seal evi­dence about the work of for­mer — and pos­si­bly still active — U.S. gov­ern­ment infor­mants con­nect­ed to the plot. The pro­tec­tion of clas­si­fied evi­dence could affect what the pub­lic ulti­mate­ly learns about the assas­si­na­tion.
...

So with all these details sug­gest­ing a com­pro­mised inves­ti­ga­tion, it’s impor­tant to note one of the most com­pelling details in this sto­ry about what actu­al­ly tran­spired on the day of the assas­si­na­tion: One of the Colom­bian mer­ce­nar­ies involved with the dead­ly raid claimed he found the pres­i­dent already shot and yelled “The pres­i­dent is dead! The pres­i­dent is dead! Let’s get out of here! They laid a trap for us!” Was there indeed anoth­er plot going on? Inves­ti­ga­tors appear to agree with the idea that no mur­der was ini­tial­ly planned so this ques­tion of whether or not the the Colom­bian mer­ce­nary was telling the truth regard­ing his claims that the pres­i­dent was already shot looms large in this inves­ti­ga­tion. Or at least it should loom large:

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By the time the Colom­bian Blan­quicet arrived at Moïse’s res­i­dence in a sev­en-car motor­cade dri­ven by Hait­ian police offi­cers, Moïse’s guards were gone. Blan­quicet said he saw gun­shot flash­es com­ing from a room on the sec­ond floor, and four men flee­ing through a back door.

One Colom­bian who entered the house claimed he had found the pres­i­dent already shot and yelled: “The pres­i­dent is dead! The pres­i­dent is dead! Let’s get out of here! They laid a trap for us!”

Colom­bian squad leader Ger­man Ale­jan­dro Rivera Gar­cia, aka “Col. Mike,” emerged from inside the house.

Rivera took out his phone in front of Vin­cent and Solages. They saw a dig­i­tal image of the president’s corpse. Rivera made a call. “The pres­i­dent is dead,” he report­ed.
...

Final­ly, note this curi­ous detail: The Columbian mer­ce­nar­ies ini­tial­ly sought refuge in the Tai­wanese embassy. What was that all about?

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Eleven of the Colom­bians would seek refuge at the near­by Tai­wanese Embassy, only to end up under arrest. Two days after the killing, Blan­quicet was among oth­ers cap­tured. They were hog-tied and placed in the back of a pick­up truck by an angry mob in the Jalousie slum.
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That’s the bizarre sto­ry just report­ed by the Mia­mi Her­ald. A kid­nap­ping plot full of DEA infor­mants that alleged­ly start­ed off as a kid­nap­ping plot against the pres­i­dent of Haiti — who appar­ent­ly had tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in cash lay­ing around — but some­how end­ed up as an assas­si­na­tion, with the Colom­bian mer­ce­nar­ies appar­ent­ly view­ing it as a ‘trap’ of some when they came across Moïse’s body. What actu­al­ly hap­pened that day? It does­n’t look like we’ll ever find out, although we’re also going to get some sort of expla­na­tion even­tu­al­ly giv­en the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions. Pre­sum­ably a very unsat­is­fac­to­ry expla­na­tion that does­n’t actu­al­ly explain any­thing.