Colombians’ arrest highlights growing presence of private military contractors in Haiti
2021/7/9 
©Miami Herald
Two men, accused of being involved in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, are being transported to the Petionville station in a police car in Port au Prince on July 8, 2021. - Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP/AFP/TNS

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The arrests of 15 Colombians in the death of Haitian President Jovenel Moise has shocked many Haitians, already reeling from the middle-of-the-night assassination of the country’s leader. Less surprising, even as police publicized photos of the detained foreigners and the array of weaponry allegedly used in the attack on the president’s home, is the presence in Haiti of heavily armed, foreign former soldiers and private security contractors.

Over the past four years Haiti has faced waves of anti-government protests against Moise’s leadership and disarray in its weak national police force. It has seen a growing number of private security contractors and soldiers for hire in the midst of its own forces.

The growing presence of these soldiers of fortune coincided with the 2016 election of Moise after a tumultuous presidential vote that had to be re-run because of fraud allegations. They also coincided with the end of a long-running United Nations peacekeeping mission, as business owners and Moise could no longer depend on the so-called U.N. Blue Helmets for protection, and lacked trust in Haiti’s own police force.

The trend has worried Haiti watchers and the U.N., which had made strengthening the police a key focus of its 15-year presence in the country in the wake of increasing gang violence and political instability.

“With the disintegration of the (Haiti National Police), which had its own internal splits, to the explosion in gangs, which I now call ‘armed militias,’... the next logical step is escalation in an arms race to secure even more firepower and expertise than can be found on the local market: foreign mercenaries,” said William O’Neill, a Haiti security expert and international human rights lawyer who was involved in the rebuilding of the country’s police force.

The first recent sighting of foreign security contractors came in May 2018, during a Haitian Flag Day celebration in the city of Arcahaie. Three unidentified, heavily armed foreign security agents were seen in the president’s security detail. They were not members of the Haiti National Police, a former high-ranking Haitian police official told The Miami Herald, recalling the incident.

Three months later, as businesses were looted during what became known as “peyi lòk” — or country on lockdown — business owners in Port-au-Prince began contemplating private contractors from abroad to protect their property and investments.

Six months later, anti-government demonstrators clashed with police during protests and people took to social networks to share photos of re-branded police vehicles belonging to presidential palace guards with M-60 machine guns and photos of individuals who appeared to be foreigners standing in the middle of Haitian agents. Among them was a former member of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, hired as part of a Haitian government contract.

The police chief at the time, Michel-Ange Gedeon, later went on radio to denounce the presence of the military hardware, saying that no new specialized unit inside the Haiti National Police had been created and that it was the first time he was seeing the new equipment.

Three months later, Gedeon’s forces arrested five Americans and two other foreign nationals claiming to be on “a government mission” after they were found with a cache of automatic rifles and pistols on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

The men didn’t specify which government had hired them. But at one point, they told officers that “their boss would call our boss.” One of the men arrested, Christopher Osman, was a former Navy SEAL.

It was later revealed that one of the men arrested had previously worked in Haiti as a private security contractor.

Facing charges of illegal arms possession and other crimes in Haiti, the group was swiftly taken out of the country with the help of the U.S. Embassy and the State Department, with the approval of Haiti’s justice minister.

At a news conference a few months later, Moise was publicly asked to address reports that he had hired private military contractors to beef up his security in the midst of escalating violent protests and demands for his resignation. Moise responded that they were there to conduct an evaluation of his security.

Moise had been ruling by decree since January 2020 when he issued an executive order in March declaring a state of emergency, allowing the Haitian government to contract with foreign entities if need be to help with the country’s rising insecurity. The move followed the death of five police officers in a botched anti-gang raid in a seaside slum of the capital, and fellow officers angrily taking to the streets to protest the killings.

Now, retired Colombian soldiers are suspected of participating in the assassination of Moise. Of 28 people suspected of carrying out the killing, 26 of them are Colombian nationals and two are naturalized Americans of Haitian descent, Haiti’s interim police director Leon Charles told journalists late Thursday.

Colombian authorities on Thursday said at least two of the Colombians implicated in the Haitian president’s assassination are former members of the country’s army.

Colombia Defense Minister Diego Molano said the South American nation had received an official request from Interpol, the international police agency, for information about the Colombian suspects.

Molano said he had instructed Colombian police and the military to collaborate with Haitian authorities “in the face of the alleged participation of Colombians in that abominable act.”

He added Colombia had created a team of experts to help in the investigation.

The head of the Colombian Army also said that he had “received a clear order of the president of the republic Ivan Duque Marquez that we are willing to provide to the national police of Colombia all of the information regarding the events and where these two former members of the public force were involved, in this case the national army.”

On Friday, Duque announced that he was sending a team from Colombia to Haiti to assist authorities. The White House also announced that a team from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security was on its way to Port-au-Prince to assist.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that the Haitian government, currently being led by acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph, had asked for investigative help and security.

“We will be sending senior FBI and DHS officials to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible to assess the situation and how we may be able to assist,” she said.

Haiti Foreign Minister Bocchit Edmond said the government has asked the U.S. to freeze the U.S. assets of anyone who participated or planned the killing.

The use of private security forces in Haiti dates back to the mid to late 1990s when there was an explosive growth in domestic, Haitian-owned and operated private security companies, O’Neill said.

O’Neill said such forces have always been a concern for the U.N.

“A few were legitimate and fulfilled useful services, but many were not,” he said. “They in effect became private police forces, something we at the U.N. at the time worried a lot about because the government, with help from the U.N., was trying to create for the first time in Haitian history a professional police service that was not politicized or under anyone’s control.”