Dozens of people, from Colombian commandos to a former police chief to private security contractors in South Florida — even a former Haitian first lady — have been accused of participating in the 2021 plot to assassinate Jovenel Moïse, Haiti’s last democratically elected president.
Mr. Moïse, 53, was killed in his home more than four years ago. So far, six people have been convicted on charges related to the assassination, and 51 are awaiting trial in Haiti and another five in Miami, in cases that have been saddled with delays.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers in Miami have been arguing over secret classified evidence and how to interview witnesses in violence-plagued Haiti. Last week, an appeals court in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, ruled that the investigation there was so poorly conducted the case needed to reopened.
that the authorities need to do more for the case to proceed.
Both cases have been hobbled by accusations of sloppy evidence and a lack of access to key witnesses. And nobody has yet answered a central question: Who was the mastermind behind the successful plot to kill Haiti’s president?
What happened?
On July 7, 2021, Mr. Moïse, 53, was assassinated in his bedroom while his children hid in another room. His wife, Martine Moïse, was shot in the elbow. In an interview with The Times weeks after the killing, Ms. Moïse said a team of Spanish-speaking men stormed the home in a suburb outside the capital, and ransacked it, apparently searching for something.
Ms. Moïse said she heard their voices: “Eso no es,” or “that’s not it,” they kept saying.
Mr. Moïse’s body, with 12 bullet wounds and an eye badly damaged, was dragged around his blood-soaked bedroom, with a copy of the Haitian Constitution nearby, crime scene photos showed.
The Spanish-speakers Ms. Moïse heard turned out to be former Colombian soldiers who had been hired by a South Florida private security firm, according to court documents. The firm’s owner said he thought he had been hired to help execute a legally binding arrest warrant. The Colombians claim that they were set up and that when they got to Mr. Möise’s home they found him already dead.
Federal prosecutors in Miami argue that the accused killers and those who plotted the crime came up with that story only after the commandos got into a shootout with the police as they tried to get away. Their defense “has no basis in logic or fact,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Who was charged?
In January 2024, an investigation in Haiti that has been widely criticized as politically motivated led to the indictments of 51 people — including Martine Möise.
Ms. Moïse was charged with conspiracy to murder because the investigating judge, Walther Voltaire, said too many of her statements were contradicted by other witnesses. She denies the accusations and claims unnamed big-money interests were behind the plot. In the United States case, she is a witness, not a defendant.
Also charged in Haiti are Joseph Badio, a former official in Haiti’s Justice Department who is accused of orchestrating the plot; Leon Charles, a former police chief; and Claude Joseph, who was the prime minister at the time of the president’s assassination. Dimitri Herard, the head of security for the national palace, was also charged, but he escaped from prison last year.
Haitian authorities also charged 18 Colombian soldiers, but two of them have been sent to the United States as part of the case in Florida.
Federal prosecutors in the United States said the plot was hatched in South Florida by a pastor, a Haitian American former security guard who lived in South Florida and several businessmen who wanted to reap the benefits of government contracts under a new administration.
The men awaiting trial in Florida are Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, a former F.B.I. informant who is accused of planning the scheme; Walter Veintemilla, a financier accused of paying for it; Antonio Intriago, a Venezuelan American who was an owner of CTU Federal Academy, the company that hired the Colombian soldiers; Christian Sanon, a pastor who thought he would be taking over as president after Mr. Moïse’s death; and James Solages, a Haitian American former security guard who served as something of a fixer, accused of helping with translations and other logistics.
Where do the cases stand now?
An appeals court in Haiti recently ruled that the case against the 51 defendants in Haiti was so shoddily pursued that the indictment was dismissed and a new investigation ordered. Important witnesses had not been interviewed, the judges said.
Though pleased that the authorities acknowledged deficiencies in the case, defense lawyers said they were upset that their incarcerated clients will remain in prison without trial for even longer.
“Now, due to this poor investigation, the illegal detention continues, so the defendants will suffer even more,” said Marc Antoine Maisonneuve, who represents the Colombian defendants. “It’s unfair.”
The Miami trial has been delayed several times. For now, defense lawyers are demanding the right to interview five Colombian soldiers who participated in the raid on Mr. Moïse’s house and are imprisoned in Haiti.
The judge ordered federal prosecutors to make the men available, but, citing U.S. State Department reports, prosecutors said that gang violence in Haiti made that impossible to do.
The men in Haiti are being held in a former children’s rehabilitation center, where United States Embassy personnel are not permitted to travel without armored vehicles and police escorts, according to an affidavit prosecutors submitted. Scheduling such a trip has been hampered because the Haitian government sometimes doesn’t even respond to diplomatic inquiries, a U.S. official said in an affidavit.
Defense lawyers in the United States argue that all the crime scene evidence came from Haiti, where evidentiary rules over matters like chain of custody do not match U.S. standards. Some evidence is classified and is being kept secret from the defense for national security reasons, though the judge ordered portions of it released.
“Given the fact that the Haitian court thinks the evidence is weak and possibly unreliable, that tells you everything we need to know about that evidence being transmitted to the United States,” said Tama Kudman, Mr. Veintemilla’s lawyer.
Emmanuel Perez, a lawyer who represents Mr. Intriago, filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that going forward would violate the right to a fair trial.
“It is unquestionably easy for the government to cast blame onto third parties, such as the Haitian government,” Mr. Perez wrote. “But who should Mr. Intriago blame when he is wrongfully convicted?”
What’s at stake?
Haiti desperately needs a symbolic moment of justice to end a long history of impunity and restore faith in democratic norms, experts say. Elections still have not been held to replace Mr. Moïse. If this case is not resolved, it could undermine the outcome of the next election.
The Moïse affair is emblematic for many Haitians who note that the killers of Haiti’s first independent leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, in 1806, were never identified or brought to justice. The power vacuum left by that killing helped trigger a civil war.
Haitians need to believe that their country is a functioning democracy and that there is a semblance of the rule of law, experts say. Haitians fear that without criminal convictions the country will continue as usual, with elites controlling who becomes the president, no matter what crimes are committed.
André Paultre contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years.
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