Haiti: one year after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, update on the investigation
President Jovenel Moïse, during an interview, in Petion-Ville (Haiti), February 7, 2020. © Dieu Nalio Chery/AP
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
In the early hours of July 7, 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his private residence in an affluent neighborhood in the Port-au-Prince region.
The armed commando pretended to be an operation of the DEA, the American anti-drug agency.
The Head of State is riddled with 12 bullets.
His wife Martine Moïse is seriously injured, but survives the attack.
No shots were fired by the police and presidential guards on duty that night.
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A year after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, the sponsors and the motive for the crime remain unknown.
73 people are targeted by the judicial inquiry, 43 of them have been charged.
If we know today that the assassination was planned largely outside of Haiti,
the investigation of the file in Port-au-Prince is not progressing
.
On the evening of the incident, it was around 1 a.m. Wednesday July 7, 2021 when shots rang out near the residence of Jovenel Moïse.
The president then seizes his phone, calls for help his close guard and those responsible for his security, but the latter will never arrive.
About twenty armed men enter the complex where the presidential family is staying.
The president is shot in his room: 12 bullet holes are found on his remains.
Wounded in the arm, the first lady Martine Moïse says she just had time to hide her children.
She maintains that the commando was looking for a document and found it.
The same day, the state of siege is established and the widow of Jovenel Moïse is then transferred to a hospital in Miami.
No member of his guard was injured.
Many gray areas persist, such as who the sponsors are, why the president was targeted and why none of the dozens of people in charge of his close protection were injured that night.
Gédéon Jean, of the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, has doubts about the competence of the five judges who have succeeded in leading the investigation.
“
It is a transnational crime: a president who was assassinated in his home by mercenaries, with the involvement of several territories: American, Colombian, Dominican.
So there you really need specialized and competent judges to be able to carry out a real investigation.
»
The United States has launched its own investigations and is moving much faster than Haitian justice, explains Jacqueline Charles, journalist for the daily
Miami Herald
:
“
Currently, three individuals have been charged and are being held in the United States.
Mario Palacios Palacios, a former Colombian soldier, Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian entrepreneur.
And the third is a former Haitian senator, Jean Joël Joseph.
He too talks to American investigators.
He is a key player.
The US investigation may provide Haitians with some answers, maybe not all, but at least some answers regarding this major crime
.
»
In an interview with RFI, Martine Moïse, the widow of the former president, denounced "
a refusal of the current Haitian authorities to do justice
" to her husband.
Haitian civil society is still talking about the assassination of Jovenel Moïse and raising many questions
ronel paul
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Haiti
Jovenel Moses