[Discussion] Haiti and the assassination of Jovenel Moïse

Breaking a relative silence on the events in Haiti, President Duque told La FM radio in Colombia that his administration is providing good leads in the investigation to the middle-of-the-night assassination inside Moïse’s private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince. His wife, first lady Martine Moïse, was wounded and is currently recovering at a Miami hospital. No one else, including any of the president’s 23-member security detail that night, was killed or apparently shot.

“Everything suggests that an important group of persons arrived in Haiti on a ‘blind hook,’ taken on a supposed protection mission and … a smaller group apparently had detailed information about the criminal operation and the intention to kill the president of Haiti,” Duque said.

The Colombian president revealed that one soldier — who was present in Haiti and returned to Colombia — has given testimony for the assassination’s investigation. Haitian authorities said 26 Colombians were involved in the armed assault; three were killed.

Duque’s revelations came on the same morning that Colombian National Police Chief Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia held a news conference that was equally explosive. Highlights of his presentation were tweeted out from his Twitter account.

Three more Colombians are being sought in connection with the assassination, Vargas said, in addition to the three “neutralized,” or dead, and 18 captured. He did not reveal their names, but said the three had met with Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian doctor from South Florida who is in custody in Port-au-Prince and has been called one of the alleged “intellectual authors” of the killing.

Vargas also shed light on the leadership of the group that traveled to Haiti through the Dominican Republic. He said a former army captain, Germán Alejandro Rivera García, was wired $50,000 from the United States. He did not say by whom, although Haitian authorities, in a news conference late Wednesday, identified both the Doral security company’s owner and a South Florida lender, Walter Vientemilla, as persons of interest. Neither man returned phone calls Thursday afternoon.

The Colombian police chief did not say whether Rivera actually was in Haiti or whether he is the ex-soldier who returned home and is cooperating with the investigation. Vargas also identified as one of the group’s leaders Duberney Capador, a Colombian killed in a firefight with Haitian police during the manhunt for Moïse’s killers.

Vargas said Capador entered Haiti via the Dominican Republic on May 10, months before the assassination. Capador’s sister has told Colombian media she believes her brother was tricked.