Haitian President Assassinated

[The_Honourable]

Ex-Colombian military, Haitian Americans suspected in killing of Haiti president
July 9, 2021
4:48 AM AST
Last Updated 3 hours ago
Andre Paultre
Robenson Sanon


PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 8 (Reuters) - A heavily armed commando unit that assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moise this week comprised 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans, authorities said on Thursday, as the hunt went on for the masterminds of the brazen killing.

Moise, 53, was fatally shot early on Wednesday at his home by what officials said was a group of foreign, trained killers, pitching the poorest country in the Americas deeper into turmoil amid political divisions, hunger and widespread gang violence.

Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano said initial findings indicated that Colombians suspected of taking part in the assassination were retired members of his country's armed forces, and pledged to support the investigations in Haiti.

Police tracked the suspected assassins on Wednesday to a house near the scene of the crime in Petionville, a northern, hillside suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

A firefight lasted late into the night and authorities detained a number of suspects on Thursday.

Police Chief Leon Charles paraded 17 men before journalists at a news conference late on Thursday, showing a number of Colombian passports, plus assault rifles, machetes, walkie-talkies and materials including bolt cutters and hammers.

"Foreigners came to our country to kill the president," Charles said, noting there were 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans.

He revealed that 15 of the Colombians were captured, as were the Haitian Americans. Three of the assailants were killed and eight were still on the run, Charles said.

Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's national police, said he had received information requests from Haiti on six suspects, two of whom had apparently been killed in an exchange with Haitian police. The other four were under arrest.

The foreign ministry in Taiwan, which maintains formal diplomatic ties with Haiti, said 11 of the suspects were captured at its embassy after they broke in.

Haiti's minister of elections and interparty relations, Mathias Pierre, identified the Haitian-American suspects as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55.

A State Department spokesman could not confirm if any U.S. citizens were among those detained, but U.S. authorities were in contact with Haitian officials, including investigators, to discuss how the United States could assist.

Officials in the mostly French- and Creole-speaking Caribbean nation said on Wednesday the assassins appeared to have spoken in English and Spanish.

"It was a full, well-equipped commando (raid), with more than six cars and a lot of equipment," Pierre said.

Officials have not yet given a motive for the killing. Since taking office in 2017, Moise had faced mass protests against his rule - first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.

An angry crowd gathered on Thursday morning to watch the police operation unfold, with some setting fire to the suspects' cars and to the house where they had hunkered down. Bullet casings were strewn in the street.

"Burn them!" shouted some of the hundreds of people outside the police station where the suspects were being held.

POWER VACUUM

Charles said the public had helped police find the suspects, but he implored residents of the sprawling seafront city of 1 million people not to take justice into their own hands.

A 15-day state of emergency was declared on Wednesday to help authorities apprehend the killers.

Still, interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said on Thursday it was time for the economy to reopen and that he had given instructions for the airport to restart operations.

Moise's death has generated confusion about who is the legitimate leader of the country of 11 million people, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

Haiti has struggled to achieve stability since the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, grappling with a series of coups and foreign interventions.

A U.N. peacekeeping mission - meant to restore order after a rebellion toppled then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 - ended in 2019 with the country still in disarray.

"I can picture a scenario under which there are issues regarding to whom the armed forces and national police are loyal, in the case there are rival claims to being placeholder president of the country," said Ryan Berg, an analyst with the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Haiti's 1987 constitution stipulates the head of the Supreme Court should take over. But amendments that are not unanimously recognized state that it be the prime minister, or, in the last year of a president's mandate - the case with Moise - that parliament should elect a president.

The head of the Supreme Court died last month due to COVID-19 amid a surge in infections in one of the few countries yet to start a vaccination campaign.

There is no sitting parliament as legislative elections scheduled for late 2019 were postponed amid political unrest.

Moise just this week appointed a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to take over from Joseph, although he had yet to be sworn in when the president was killed.

Joseph appeared on Wednesday to take charge of the situation, running the government response to the assassination, appealing to Washington for support and declaring a state of emergency.

Henry - considered more favorably by the opposition - told Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste that he did not consider Joseph the legitimate prime minister and he should revert to the role of foreign minister.

"I think we need to speak. Claude was supposed to stay in the government I was going to have," Henry was quoted as saying.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/ ... 021-07-08/

Wow... good work by the police.

Now the questions is... who hired them

[Wraith King]

Who stands to benefit politically from his death? The culprit in that group.

[VexXx Dogg]

There's already a power struggle happening.

The Biden administration confirmed Thursday that it recognizes Claude Joseph as acting prime minister of Haiti and said it would help the Haitian National Police investigate the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

Administration officials emphasized the need for democratic elections this year, as it became clear that a power struggle was taking shape between Joseph and Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon appointed prime minister by Moïse the day before he was killed.

Since the assassination, U.S. officials have been in touch with Joseph, Henry and other officials in Haiti.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... rylink=cpy

[Lou Screuz]

https://time.com/5609054/haiti-protests-petrocaribe/

Why a Venezuelan Oil Program Is Fueling Massive Street Protests in Haiti
By Ciara Nugent
June 24, 2019 1:12 PM EDT

For more than four months, Haitians have been taking to the streets to demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse amid allegations he embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars of government funds earmarked for badly needed social programs.

A damning report on government corruption, delivered to the Haitian senate by official auditors on May 31, has triggered fresh demonstrations, with thousands marching through the capital, Port au Prince, and other cities throughout June. On June 20, a delegation from the Organization of American States traveled to Haiti in hopes of “[lowering] the political temperature,” an official told the Miami Herald.

One government program, PetroCaribe, is at the center of the 600-page report––and protesters’ anger.

Under PetroCaribe, a strategic oil alliance signed with nearby Venezuela in 2006, Haiti––the poorest country in the Americas––saved precious dollars by borrowing fuel from its oil-rich neighbor and deferring payment for up to 25 years. Governments were supposed to use the extra money to develop the economy and fund social programs. Instead, at least $2 billion (equivalent to almost a quarter of Haiti’s total economy for 2017) went missing and Haitians saw few of the promised benefits, according to protesters and local media. Haitian taxpayers still owe Venezuela billions of dollars for the borrowed oil.

The scandal has become a rallying cry for anti-corruption activists, many of whom call themselves PetroChallengers. Here’s what to know about PetroCaribe and how it helped spark Haiti’s protests.

What is PetroCaribe?

Venezuela’s former president Hugo Chávez set up PetroCaribe in 2005. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and in the mid-2000’s, long before its current economic collapse, the country was producing around 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. Chávez wanted to convert those resources into greater regional influence and win allies against the U.S. in the Organization of American States.

The PetroCaribe program was effectively a way for Venezuela to give other countries development loans––except it loaned oil instead of cash. Venezuela’s state oil company sold oil to Haiti and 17 other Caribbean countries and allowed them to defer payment on 40% of what they bought for up to 25 years, charging a low rate of interest for the debt. Recipient governments then sold that oil and used the proceeds to pay for social programs. With global oil prices at record levels in the early years of the program, the oil sales generated a lot of cash.

The program suffered after Venezuela’s economy began to break down in 2014, as a drop in the oil price laid bare the effects of years of corruption and mismanagement. Venezuela’s oil production is down to 830,000 barrels a day and it stopped fulfilling its PetroCaribe commitments to Haiti last year, Reuters reports. Haiti is “one of the most vulnerable members” of the PetroCaribe agreement, according to analysts at the Economist Intelligence Unit and it is now suffering fuel shortages as a result of the program’s decline.

What happened to PetroCaribe in Haiti?

In Haiti the PetroCaribe money was precious. Particularly after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and led to a still ongoing cholera outbreak, the government was supposed to use it to fund infrastructure and healthcare projects. It claimed to have funded around 400 such projects using almost $4 billion dollars raised by PetroCaribe oil between 2008 and 2016.

But a lack of visible results sparked suspicion. And in November 2017, a five-person commission in the Haitian senate investigated the program and reported evidence of widespread corruption in the use of the funds under three successive governments during that period. The amount of money in government coffers was misreported, exchange rates were adjusted and more than half of the contracts given to companies to service the projects did not go through the usual government bid process, according to the report.

Because the money was not from a conventional international aid package, analysts say there was little oversight of how governments spent the proceeds and few conditions on what they could do with it––leaving ample opportunity for corruption.

The missing funds became a simmering political scandal. But the corruption didn’t spark protest until after summer 2018, when inflation was spiraling and government plans to raise fuel taxes caused violent protests. Gilbert Mirambeau a Haitian videographer living in Canada Tweeted his frustration at Haiti’s economic situation with a photo of himself, blindfolded, asking, in Creole, “Where is the PetroCaribe money?”

Other social media users wondering the same thing helped spread the hashtags #KotKòbPetwoKaribea, #PwosèPetroCaribeA (meaning “prosecute those involved in PetroCaribe”) #PetroCaribeChallenge and rallies began taking place in cities around Haiti, demanding the resignation of politicians implicated in the ongoing investigation, including Moïse.

PetroCaribe is partly a cipher for Haiti’s widespread and deep-rooted corruption problem. The country is ranked 161 of 180 countries on watchdog group Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions index and questions have also been raised about the destination of up to $13 billion in international aid sent to the country after its 2010 earthquake. The World Bank says corruption is a fundamental cause of Haiti’s staggering levels of poverty.

How is President Moïse involved in the PetroCaribe scandal?

Moïse took office in February 2017–after the period the PetroCaribe investigations looked at. But the report published May 31––the second phase of a three-part investigation––alleges that he helped embezzle funds from a large PetroCaribe project before he came to office, when he was head of the company Agritrans. Agritrans was paid around $700,000 to repair some roads––even though its entire businesses was growing bananas.

On June 12, Moïse denied any wrongdoing and reiterated that he will not step down, despite the ongoing protests.

“I’m looking you in the eye today to say: Your president, whom you voted for, is not guilty of corruption,” he said at a press conference, adding that those who had misused state funds would be “brought to justice in a fair, equitable trial without political persecution.”

[Wraith King]

There's already a power struggle happening.

The Biden administration confirmed Thursday that it recognizes Claude Joseph as acting prime minister of Haiti and said it would help the Haitian National Police investigate the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

Administration officials emphasized the need for democratic elections this year, as it became clear that a power struggle was taking shape between Joseph and Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon appointed prime minister by Moïse the day before he was killed.

Since the assassination, U.S. officials have been in touch with Joseph, Henry and other officials in Haiti.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... rylink=cpy

Seems the answer is Claude Joseph.

[wagonrunner]

from FB

https://www.facebook.com/614412026/vide ... 621682027/

[Habit7]

[Gladiator]

Cuba has an uprising now... and wth going on in South Africa.

[MaxPower]

Unfortunately,

The world does not seem to care about the Haitian assassination.

Die down fast.

[matr1x]

And allyuh want Spanish here?

[MaxPower]

And allyuh want Spanish here?

Based on the support from the majority of the citizens and the Govt…..the answer is yes bro.

[RedVEVO]

Unfortunately,

The world does not seem to care about the Haitian assassination.

Die down fast.

Haiti has aways been a political challenge for the Caribbean and for the USA .

However in Miami they do adequately well - above average - business peeps - professionals @ Little Haiti .

Maybe one day in the near future - after the exodus from T&T via Bowen made boats - in a galaxy not far away -

A " Little Trinidad" will also shine

[The_Honourable]

Haiti President Moise’s widow, ex-PM among 50 charged in his assassination

Leaked document claims first lady allegedly conspired with former PM to kill the president and replace him herself.



A Haitian judge investigating the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise has charged his widow, the former prime minister and an ex-chief of police with complicity in the killing.

The 122-page leaked document, published by local media outlet AyiboPost on Monday, detailed how the president’s widow, Martine Moise, allegedly conspired with former Prime Minister Claude Joseph to kill the president, intending to replace him herself.

In the document, Judge Walther Wesser Voltaire ordered the arrest and trial of some 50 people involved in the gunning down of Moise at his private residence in July 2021. A group of about 20 assailants, most of them Colombian mercenaries, were on the scene.

All the accused were referred to the criminal court “to be judged on the facts of criminal conspiracy, armed robbery, terrorism, assassination and complicity in assassination”.

Justifying the indictment of the former first lady, who was wounded during the attack, the document described her statements as “so tainted by contradictions that they leave something to be desired and discredit her”.

Joseph and the former director-general of the national police, Leon Charles, were also found to have “sufficient indications” of involvement in the killing. AyiboPost specified that the document did not clearly identify the masterminds of the assassination, nor their financiers.

Moise has criticised what she calls unjust arrests on social media. Joseph previously told the Miami Herald newspaper that the president’s de facto successor, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, was “weaponizing the Haitian justice system” to persecute opponents in “a classic coup d’etat”.

A spokesperson for Henry’s office said the judge was independent and “free to issue his order in accordance with the law and his conscience”.

A separate case on Moise’s killing is being tried in Miami.

The United States found the case fell within its jurisdiction because part of the assassination plot was hatched in South Florida. Prosecutions were launched against 11 people over their alleged involvement in the murder.

Six of 11 defendants have pleaded guilty to a plot to send Colombian mercenaries to kidnap Moise, a plan which was at the eleventh hour changed to a plot to murder him.

The conspirators had, according to US charges, sought to replace Moise with Haitian-American pastor Christian Emmanuel Sanon.

Since Moise’s death, Haiti has only spiralled deeper into chaos. No election has been held and Moise has not been succeeded as president.

Henry, who now leads an opposition party, postponed elections indefinitely, citing a devastating earthquake and the growing power of heavily armed criminal gangs, for which he has sought foreign aid.

Gangs run rampant in large swaths of the country, now estimated to control most of the capital, and homicides more than doubled last year to nearly 4,800, according to a United Nations report released this month.

Kenya is preparing to lead a UN-ratified international force to support Haitian police, though prior abuses by foreign missions and allegations against Henry’s government have left countries wary of volunteering support.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/2 ... assination

[Dizzy28]

Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry has agreed to resign following weeks of mounting pressure and increasing violence in the impoverished country. It comes after regional leaders met in Jamaica on Monday to discuss a political transition in the country. Mr Henry is currently stranded in Puerto Rico after being prevented by armed gangs from returning home. He said his government would resign following the "installation of [a transition] council."

"I'm asking all Haitians to remain calm and do everything they can for peace and stability to come back as fast as possible," Mr Henry said in a video address announcing his resignation.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68541349

The defacto leader of the country is currently a gang leader called Barbecue. Named so becuase he likes to burn people alive.

[wing]

Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry has agreed to resign following weeks of mounting pressure and increasing violence in the impoverished country. It comes after regional leaders met in Jamaica on Monday to discuss a political transition in the country. Mr Henry is currently stranded in Puerto Rico after being prevented by armed gangs from returning home. He said his government would resign following the "installation of [a transition] council."

"I'm asking all Haitians to remain calm and do everything they can for peace and stability to come back as fast as possible," Mr Henry said in a video address announcing his resignation.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68541349

The defacto leader of the country is currently a gang leader called Barbecue. Named so becuase he likes to burn people alive.

It's amazing that the island of Hispaniola could contain both a failed state and a relatively prosperous tourist haven. Even though history hasn't been kind to Haiti, it is patently obvious that the demographics of the island has informed the respective country's fortunes. Unfortunately almost all majority African populated countries are firmly third world at best.

[Dizzy28]

^ I always thought the DR was a backwaters kinna boondocky country.

Visited in 2019 and again last year. Never for tourism purposes and thus not to tourist areas.
Relatively prosperous is being unkind to them. Without extractive industries their GDP per capita is in the US$10K+ range. Their pace of infrastructural improvements in the 4 years inbetween my visits is chalk and cheese as compared to say a Trinidad. Airport, roads, city infrastructure etc all improved upon. I mean they also have traffic thats makes a Sando to PoS morning run seem like a breeze but thats to be expected when the greater Santo Domingo area has like 4m living there.

Haitians were at alot of street corners hawking stuff but I see the Dominicans are deporting all of them as of this week.

[wing]

^ I always thought the DR was a backwaters kinna boondocky country.

Visited in 2019 and again last year. Never for tourism purposes and thus not to tourist areas.
Relatively prosperous is being unkind to them. Without extractive industries their GDP per capita is in the US$10K+ range. Their pace of infrastructural improvements in the 4 years inbetween my visits is chalk and cheese as compared to say a Trinidad. Airport, roads, city infrastructure etc all improved upon. I mean they also have traffic thats makes a Sando to PoS morning run seem like a breeze but thats to be expected when the greater Santo Domingo area has like 4m living there.

Haitians were at alot of street corners hawking stuff but I see the Dominicans are deporting all of them as of this week.

I meant relative to their neighbour.

[Dizzy28]

Man underestimated Haiti.
He after all met with Mexican sicarios and lived to tell that take.

[88sins]

Considering that he hugging up them fellas, all I go say is that to me he don't look very kidnapped.
But what do I know

[paid_influencer]

man real like barbeque oui