Jovenel Moïse, the 48th president of Haiti, was assassinated on 7 July 2021 at 1:00 am EDT (UTC−04:00) at his residence in Port-au-Prince. A group of 28 foreign mercenaries, mostly from Colombia, are alleged to be responsible for the killing. First Lady Martine Moïse was also shot multiple times in the attack and was airlifted to the United States for emergency treatment. Later in the day, USGPN (L'Unité de Sécurité Générale du Palais National, or The General Security Unit of the National Palace, headed by Dimitri Herard) killed three of the suspected assassins and arrested 20 more. A manhunt was launched for other gunmen as well as the masterminds of the attack.
Haitian chief prosecutor Bedford Claude questioned Moïse's top bodyguards; none of the president's security guards were killed or injured in the attack. U.S. authorities arrested 11 suspects alleged to have conspired in the assassination. Martine Moïse and former acting prime minister Claude Joseph were formally charged on 19 February 2024 with conspiring in the assassination.
Background
Election
Jovenel Moïse was the chosen successor to President Michel Martelly, who was constitutionally barred from seeking reelection in the 2015 presidential election (Martelly was ineligible to run again as Haiti's constitution does not allow for consecutive terms.) According to official results, Moïse received 33% of ballots cast in the first round, more than any other candidate but short of the majority required to avoid a run-off election. These results were disputed by second-place finisher Jude Célestin and others, whose supporters protested. The mandated runoff was repeatedly delayed, prompting further protest, some leading to violent unrest. The 2015 election results were eventually annulled. When Martelly's term expired, the legislature appointed Jocelerme Privert as interim president before fresh elections in November 2016. In these elections, Moïse received 56% of the official tally, enough to avoid a runoff. Moïse assumed office on 7 February 2017.
Political turmoil
During Moïse's time in office, political unrest and violence were common, including violent anti-government protests. The span of Moïse's term in office was disputed, sparking a constitutional crisis. Presidential terms in Haiti are five years, and Moïse claimed a mandate to govern until February 2022, five years after his taking office. However, opposition figures claimed Moïse's mandate ended in February 2021, five years after the victor of the 2015 presidential election would have been sworn in under normal circumstances. Widespread protests demanded Moïse's resignation, and the opposition named Judge Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis as a proposed interim president in February 2021. Moïse received support from the United States government and the Organization of American States (OAS) to remain in office until 2022. Scheduled legislative elections in October 2019, as well as a referendum for a new constitution, were delayed until September 2021, which resulted in Moïse ruling by decree.
Moïse said he foiled a coup attempt to kill him and overthrow the government in February 2021; at least 23 people were arrested. Moïse appointed seven different prime ministers during his time in office, the last of whom was Ariel Henry, who was appointed on 5 July 2021, but had not been sworn in by the time of the attack.
The New York Times revealed that before his death, Moïse had been working to expose the corrupt politicians and businesspeople who were involved in the illegal drug trade, by passing on information to the United States. The most significant among these people was Charles Saint-Rémy, a businessman and brother-in-law of Martelly. Moïse had also been seeking to end the state capture by affluent individuals, including Martelly's family. After the apparent coup attempt was prevented in 2021 by Dimitri Hérard, the head of the presidential guard, Moïse accused Haiti's elite of being behind it and privately started planning to have them exposed.
Planning
According to the head of the National Police of Colombia, General Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia, the Colombian attackers were recruited by four companies. He stated that monetary motivation seemed to be the only reason behind the attackers agreeing to do the job. The Florida-based company Worldwide Investment Development Group was identified as the company that raised money for the assassination. In May 2021, its owner, Walter Veintemilla, met with Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old Haitian American, self-described pastor and physician, who apparently saw himself as a potential future leader for the country, to discuss the likelihood of political upheaval in Haiti. Veintemilla agreed to extend loans to Sanon, purportedly for his security during the envisioned upheavel. A large portion of the funds went to a Miami-based security company called CTU Security for the hiring of Colombian mercenaries. President of Colombia Iván Duque Márquez said that most of the Colombians went to Haiti under the impression that they were to work as bodyguards, but a few others were aware of the actual plan.
Parnell Duverger, a retired adjunct professor who taught economics at Broward College, stated that he attended around 10 meetings with the accused to plan Haiti's future after Moïse's resignation. These meetings were conducted in Florida and the Dominican Republic months before the assassination. At no point, according to Duverger, was a coup or murder planned. It was assumed that Sanon was eventually going to become the prime minister of Haiti. Another participant, Frantz Gilot, who is a consultant for the United Nations, also denied that there was a plan to kill the president. According to American court filings related to the assassination, former Drug Enforcement Administration informant and Haitian-American Joseph Vincent, who had traveled to Haiti in 2021 to support Sanon, pretended to be an employee of the United States Department of State during meetings and provided material support and services to the plan. He stated that he and another Haitian-American, James Solages, had been hired as interpreters by the co-conspirators of the plot.
According to an investigation carried out by The Wall Street Journal, CTU hired a Colombian veteran named Duberney Capador to recruit other former soldiers, which he accomplished through WhatsApp, promising them a monthly salary of $3,000 to protect Haiti's elite politicians. Capador claimed that CTU had the support of the U.S State Department, while they would take part in urban combat and live in "threadbare accommodations". However, there was no mention of a plan to kill or overthrow Moïse. Per the American investigation, former Colombian army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera Garcia who led the Colombian mercenaries began meeting with the co-conspirators in February 2021 for the planning of the operation and one of the persons at the meetings was Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, a former Colombian-American informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and an employee of CTU who assisted in hiring some of the Colombian mercenaries and told Rivera to follow the directions of another conspirator.
CTU used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets for the suspected assailants, for flights from Bogotá to Santo Domingo. According to Valencia, two of the Colombian suspects flew to Santo Domingo from Bogotá via Panama on 6 May 2021. They arrived in Port-au-Prince on 10 May by taking another flight. A further 11 Colombian suspects took a flight to the resort town of Punta Cana from Bogotá on 4 June. They crossed into Haiti on 7 June through the Carrizal border crossing.
The mercenaries were later told they would be guarding Moïse. On 22 June the men met with Antonio Intriago, the owner of CTU, and were told that they would help lift Haiti out of poverty by increasing security in the country, which would attract investors. A judge who interviewed the two Haitian-American suspects, one of whom said he had been in Haiti for one month prior to the attack and the other of whom said he had been in Haiti for six months, said that the plot had been planned intensively for a month at a high-end hotel in Pétion-Ville.
Haitian National Police Chief Léon Charles said that Sanon had arrived in Haiti in June via a plane and had contacted two other people behind the plot. The attackers were initially contracted to guard him but later were tasked with executing an arrest warrant against Moïse, so that he could be legally replaced as president. Charles added that he had recruited some of the attackers through CTU Security, and 22 more were recruited later. Per the American prosecutors, Wendelle Coq Thélot, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Haiti, had gained the backing of the conspirators in Florida to become the president of Haiti in place of Sanon and apparently signed a document requesting arrest of Moïse, which was delivered by Solages to Intragio on 28 June.
According to Charles, one of the suspects, Joseph-Félix Badio, who is a former employee of the Haitian government, assisted the attackers by renting a home to them near Moïse's home. Reynaldo Corvington, owner of the Haitian security company "Corvington Courier & Security Service", provided them with lodging and sirens for their cars with the help of one of the assailants. Former Haitian Senator John Joël Joseph was also identified by Charles as a mastermind of the plot, furnishing the attackers with weapons and organizing meetings.
According to the complaint filed by the United States Department of Justice, the suspects had been training in Haiti for several weeks, according to interviews with them and images from electronic devices. The suspects also stated that they originally only planned to kidnap Moïse two weeks before the assassination when he returned from Turkey, but were forced to call it off as they did not receive the signal to carry it out. They also planned to have Fantom 509, a gang consisting of disgruntled former police officers, kidnap Moïse but later decided against it. One of the arrested suspects stated that they planned to capture him at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport and flee Haiti with him, but they had to cancel the operation as they were unable to charter a private plane. He was however told on 6 July that the plan had changed, and they were to kill Moïse instead.
Per leaked audio confessions obtained by Noticias Caracol, the suspected assailants admitted their involvement to the Haitian police: that shortly before the operation, they had been ordered by one of the masterminds to kill Moïse and everyone in his home and had also been told to loot the money stashed there. They were told to flee to the Presidential Palace, where the new president of Haiti would be sworn in, and they thought the police would protect them. According to information retrieved by The New York Times, some of the suspects stated that retrieving Moïse's list which contained names of the corrupt elite involved in the drug trade was a main objective of theirs.
Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar in an interview with The New York Times admitted to planning and financing the plot but stated that he believed that the goal was to only remove Moïse from power. Jaar stated that he became involved because he thought that Moïse was authoritarian, and he agreed to join after being told that it was being supported by the United States which wanted Moïse gone due to his links with terrorists and drug traffickers. He added that he provided $130,000 for the plot, procured guns, and provided a safehouse for the Colombians. Jaar stated that he had discussed with a leader of Fantom 509 about assaulting Moïse's residence, but the gang refused to participate about a week before the assassination, and the Colombians were then told that their mission had changed to storming Moïse's residence.
Per the FBI affidavit, Jaar met a co-conspirator before the assassination and planned along with others to have Moïse arrested upon his return from Turkey in mid-June per witness statements. After that plot failed, the other conspirator traveled from Haiti to Miami on June 28 to request assistance in targeting Moïse. The Miami Herald stated that he informed CTU about it. The affidavit adds that by this point, some conspirators were aware that the actual objective was to kill Moïse. According to the investigation, Rivera and Solages were told that the objective had changed to killing Moïse two weeks before the assassination, which they then passed on to Vincent and Palacios. A day before the assassination, Vincent falsely told the Colombian mercenaries that they were to kill Moïse as part of an operation of the Central Intelligence Agency.