PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Haiti’s interim government has asked the US and the United Nations to deploy troops to protect vital infrastructure, to stabilize the country and to prepare for elections following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse
The staggering request for US military assistance was reminiscent of the tumult following Haiti’s last assassination of the president in 1915, when an angry mob dragged President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam from the French embassy and beat him to death. In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines to Haiti and justified the nearly two decades of American military occupation to avert anarchy.
Mathias Pierre, Haiti’s Minister of Election, defended the government’s request for military assistance, and said in an interview with The Associated Press on Saturday that local police are weak and have no resources.
« What are we doing? Are we leaving the country in chaos? Private property destroyed? People killed after the President’s assassination? Or are we preventing as a government? « he said. » We are not calling for the occupation of the country. We are asking for small troops to support and help us. … As long as we are weak, we will need our neighbors. «
The request has been received, but a decision has not yet been made, said a US official familiar with the situation who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and un on condition of anonymity. But the Biden government has so far given no indications of sending troops.
For the time being there are only plans to send FBI officers to help investigate a crime that is Haiti, a country already out of poverty and gang violence has plunged into a destabilizing struggle for power and constitutional stalemate.
Haiti has also sent a letter to the United Nations asking for help, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said on Saturday. The letter called for troops and security at key facilities, according to a UN source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the details of the letter are private.
« We definitely need help and have asked our international partners for help “, Said Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph of the AP late Friday in a telephone interview. « We believe our partners can help the national police to resolve the situation. »
On Friday, a group of lawmakers announced that they had Joseph Lambert, the head of the defunct Senate of Haiti, as provisional president in a have recognized direct challenge to the authority of the transitional government. They also recognized as Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whom Moïse had chosen to succeed Joseph the day before his assassination but had not yet taken office or formed a government.
One of those lawmakers, Rosemond Pradel, told the AP, that Joseph “is neither qualified nor has the right” to run the country.
Joseph, who took the lead with the support of the police and the military, said he was “not interested in a power struggle”.
“There is only one way people in Haiti can become president. And that through elections, ”he said
In the meantime, more details about a dark international conspiracy have emerged: a shootout with armed men holed up in a foreign embassy, a private security company operating from a warehouse in Miami operated from, and a cameo sighting of a Hollywood star.
Those arrested include two Haitian Americans, including one who worked alongside Sean Penn after the nation’s devastating earthquake in 2010. Police have also arrested or killed more than a dozen former members of the Colombian military.
Some of the suspects were arrested during a raid on the Taiwanese embassy, where they were believed to have sought refuge. National Police Chief Léon Charles said eight other suspects were still at large and wanted.
His wife, who was flown to Miami for surgery, was seriously injured in the attack on Moïse’s house before sunrise on Wednesday. She issued a statement on Saturday that the president was killed for trying to develop the country. « The mercenaries who murdered the president are currently behind bars, » she said in Creole. « But other mercenaries are currently killing his dream, his vision, his ideology. »
Colombian officials said the men were recruited by four companies and traveled to Haiti via the Dominican Republic. US-trained Colombian soldiers are often recruited by security companies and mercenary armies in conflict areas because of their experience in a decades-long war against left-wing rebels and drug cartels.
The sister of one of the dead suspects, Duberney Capador, told the AP that she was last on spoke to her brother late Wednesday – hours after Moïse’s murder – when the men hiding and surrounding themselves in a house were desperately trying to negotiate their way out in a shootout.
« He told me that I shouldn’t tell our mother so she doesn’t worry, ”said Yenny Capador, fighting back tears.
It is not known who carried out the attack. And questions remain as to how the perpetrators managed to break into the president’s residence as agents of the US Drugs Administration and met with little resistance from those charged with protecting the president.
Capador told her Brother, who retired from the Colombian Army in 2019 with the rank of sergeant, was hired by a private security company with the understanding that he would provide protection to powerful people in Haiti.
Capador said she knew almost nothing about the employer, but shared a picture of her brother in a uniform with the logo of CTU Security – a company based in Doral, a suburb of Miami popular with Colombian migrants.
Francisco Uribe’s wife, one of those arrested , told Colombian W Radio that CTU had offered to pay the men about $ 2,700 a month – a pathetic sum for a dangerous international mission, but far more than what most men, sergeants, and working soldiers earned from their pensions.
CTU Security was registered in 2008 and runs as President Antonio Intriago, who is also affiliated with several other Florida registered organizations, of some of which have since been disbanded, including the Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy, the Venezuelan American National Council, and the Doral Food Corp.
The CTU website lists two addresses, one of which is a gray warehouse that opened on Friday closed without a sign indicating who it belongs to. The other is a small suite under a different company name in a modern office building a few blocks away. A receptionist said Intriago came by every few days to pick up mail and hold meetings. Intriago, who is Venezuelan, did not respond to phone calls or emails asking for comment. Investigating magistrate Clément Noël told Le Nouvelliste that the arrested Americans James Solages and Joseph Vincent said the attackers had just pretending to arrest Moïse, not kill him. Noël said Solages and Vincent acted as translators for the attackers, the newspaper reported on Friday.
The 35-year-old Solages described himself as a « certified diplomatic agent, » a child advocate and budding politician on a now distant Website for a charity he founded in South Florida in 2019 to support residents of his Haitian hometown of Jacmel.
He worked briefly as a driver and bodyguard for a relief organization founded by Penn following a 7.0 earthquake, which killed 300,000 Haitians and left tens of thousands homeless. As a former employer, he also names the Canadian Embassy in Haiti.
Joseph did not want to say exactly who was behind the attack, but said Moïse made numerous enemies when he attacked oligarchs who for years benefited from overly generous state contracts .
Some of these elite insiders are now the focus of investigators, with authorities demanding that presidential candidate and businessman Reginald Boulos and former Senate President Youri Latortue meet with prosecutors for questioning next week. No further details were released and none of the men were charged.
Analysts say whoever planned the outrageous attack likely had ties to a criminal underworld that thrives amid corruption and drug trafficking. The growing power of the gangs displaced more than 14,700 people in Haiti alone last month when they set fire to and ransacked homes in a battle for territory.
Hundreds of Haitians gathered outside the US embassy in Port on Friday -au-Prince and pleaded for a way out of the country. Women carried babies and young men waved passports and ID cards and shouted, « Refuge! » And Help! «
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“This country has nothing to offer,” said 36-year-old Thermidor Joam. « If the president can be killed for his own safety, I have no protection if someone tries to kill me. » Goodman answered from Miami. AP Writers Evens Sanon and the videographer Pierre-Richard Luxama in Port-au-Prince, Astrid Suárez in Bogota, Colombia, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Trenton Daniel in New York contributed to this.
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