A Haitian police tell a woman to walk away from a gate of the US embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Haiti’s interim government has asked the US and the United Nations to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilize the country and prepare for elections following the assassination of President Jovanel Mosse.
Amid the confusion, hundreds of Haitians were pleading outside the US embassy in Port-au-Prince to leave the country. The women carried the children and the youths, waving passports and ID cards, shouted, “Refuge!” and help!”
“We certainly need help and we have sought help from our international partners,” Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph told The Associated Press in a phone interview late Friday. “We are confident that our allies can assist the National Police in resolving the situation.”
The surprise request for US military support recalls the tumult that followed the assassination of Haiti’s last president in 1915, when an angry mob dragged President Vilbran Guillaume Sam out of the French embassy and thrashed him to death. In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent Marines to Haiti, justifying the US military occupation – which lasted nearly two decades – as a way to stop the chaos.
The request was received but no decision has been made, according to a US official familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because it is not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But the Biden administration has not yet given any indication that it will provide military aid.
For now, it only plans to send FBI officers to help investigate a crime that has engulfed Haiti, already doomed by poverty and mass violence, in a volatile fight for power and a constitutional impasse. is.
Two days after Haitian President Jovenel Mois was assassinated in his home, a large crowd gathered outside the embassy amid rumors on radio and social media that the US would hand out deportation and humanitarian visas.
UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Saturday that Haiti had sent a letter to the United Nations requesting assistance. According to a UN source on condition of anonymity, the letter asked for troops and security at key installations as the details of the letter are private.
On Friday, a group of lawmakers announced they had recognized the head of Haiti’s disbanded Senate, Joseph Lambert, as provisional president in a direct challenge to the authority of an interim government. He also gained recognition as Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whom Mosse had chosen to replace Joseph the day before he was killed, but who had not yet taken office or formed a government.
One of those lawmakers, Rosamund Pradel, told the AP that Joseph “is neither qualified nor has the legal authority” to lead the country.
Joseph expressed disappointment that others would try to take advantage of Mosse’s murder for political gain.
“I am not interested in a power struggle,” said Joseph, who took over the leadership with the support of the police and army. “There is only one way people can become president in Haiti. And that is through elections.”
Meanwhile, more details emerge of a murder that has rapidly taken wind of a suspicious, international conspiracy: a shootout with gunmen hiding in a foreign embassy, a private security firm operating out of a warehouse in Miami, and a Hollywood A cameo sight of the star.
Those arrested included two Haitian Americans, one of whom worked with Sean Penn in the aftermath of the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. Police have also detained or killed more than a dozen former members of the Colombian military.
Some of the suspects were caught in a raid on the Taiwan embassy, where they are believed to have sought asylum. National Police Chief Leon Charles said eight other suspects were still on the run and were being sought.
His wife, who was also taken to Miami for surgery, was also seriously injured in an attack on Mose’s home before dawn on Wednesday. He issued a statement on Saturday saying the president was assassinated for trying to develop the country. “The mercenaries who murdered the president are currently behind bars,” she said in Creole, “but the other mercenaries currently want to kill her dreams, her vision, her ideology.”
Colombian officials said the men were recruited by four companies and traveled through the Dominican Republic in two groups to the Caribbean nation. US-trained Colombian soldiers are often recruited by security firms and mercenaries in conflict zones because of their experience in decades-long warfare against leftist rebels and drug cartels.
The sister of one of the dead suspects, Doberny Capador, told the AP that she last spoke to her brother late Wednesday – hours after Mosse’s murder – when people hiding and surrounded by a house were out of their way. They were trying their best to get out, fired a shot.
“She told me not to tell my mom, so she wouldn’t worry,” Yeni Capador said, fighting back tears.
It is not known who is the mastermind of the attack. And the question remains how criminals were able to break into the presidential residence posing as US Drug Enforcement Administration agents accused of protecting the president met little resistance.
Capador said his brother, who retired as a sergeant from the Colombian army in 2019, was hired by a private security firm with the understanding that he would provide security to powerful figures in Haiti.
Capador said she knew almost nothing about the employer, but shared a photo of her brother in uniform emblazoned with the logo of CTU Security — a company based in Doral, a Miami suburb popular with Colombian immigrants.
Among those arrested was Francisco Uribe’s wife, who told Colombia’s W Radio that the CTU offered to pay the men about $2,700 per month – a modest amount for a dangerous international mission but most men, non-commissioned officers. And far more soldiers than professional, earned from their pensions.
Uribe is under investigation in the alleged 2008 killing of an unarmed civilian who was posed as a man killed in battle, one of thousands of extra-judicial killings that took place more than a decade before Colombia’s US-trained The army was shook.
CTU Security was registered in 2008 and listed as its president, Antonio Intriago, which is also affiliated with several other Florida-registered entities, some of which have been dissolved, including the Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy, Venezuela. American National Council and Doral Food Corp.
CTU’s website lists two addresses, one of which is a gray warehouse that was closed on Friday, with no indication to whom it belonged. The other is a small suite under a different company name in a modern office building a few blocks away. One receptionist said that Intriago stopped every few days to collect mail and hold meetings. Intriago, who is from Venezuela, did not return phone calls and an email seeking comment.
“We are most interested in explaining what happened, so that my brother’s reputation doesn’t remain the same,” Capador said. “He was a humble, hard-working man. He had respect and adornments.”
In addition to Colombians, two Haitian Americans were among those detained by the police.
Haitians wave their passports while shouting “Help, refugees” as they gather outside the US embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Investigative Judge Clement Nol told Le Novelliste that the arrested Americans, James Soulejes and Joseph Vincent, said the attackers had originally planned only to arrest Mosse, not to kill him. The newspaper reported Friday that Noel said Soulage and Vincent were acting as translators for the attackers.
Solages, 35, described himself as a “certified diplomatic agent” on a now-deleted website for a charity for children and budding politician that he founded in 2019 in his Haitian hometown of Jacmel in South Florida. To assist the resident of
He worked briefly as a driver and bodyguard for a relief organization founded by Penn, after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed 300,000 Haitians and left thousands homeless. She is also listed as one of the previous employers of the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. His now defunct Facebook page has pictures of armored military vehicles and a shot of himself in front of an American flag.
Calls to the charity and to Soulage’s affiliates remained unanswered. However, a relative in South Florida said Solages had no military training and did not believe he was involved in the murder.
Joseph declined to specify who was behind the attack, but said that Mosse had earned many enemies while attacking oligarchs who had benefited from overly liberal state contracts over the years.
Some of those elite insiders are now the focus of investigators, with officials asking that presidential candidate and businessman Reginald Bolos and former Senate President Yuri Latortue meet with prosecutors next week for questioning. No further details were provided and none of the men have been charged.
Analysts say whoever orchestrated the attack may have links to a criminal underworld that has flourished in recent years as the roots of corruption and drug trafficking have become stronger. The growing force of gangs displaced more than 14,700 people in Haiti alone last month as they set fire to and ransacked homes in fighting over the area.
“This country has nothing to offer,” said 36-year-old Thermidor Jom, one of the crowds outside the US embassy on Friday. “If the president can be killed by his own safety, I have no protection if someone wants to kill me.”
Prosecutors also want to question members of Mosse’s security details, including the president’s security coordinator, Jean Laguel Civil, and Dimitri Herrard, the head of the National Palace’s general security unit.
“If you were responsible for the president’s security, where were you?” Port-au-Prince prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude was quoted as telling the French-language newspaper Le Nouveliste. “What did you do to avoid this fate for the President?”
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