In stunning call, Haiti’s interim leader requests US to deploy troops

By Danica Coto and Joshua Goodman
July 10, 2021 — 

Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Haiti’s interim government said it asked the US to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilise the country and prepare the way for elections in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination.

“We definitely need assistance and we’ve asked our international partners for help,” Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a phone interview late on Friday (Saturday AEST). “We believe our partners can assist the national police in resolving the situation.”

The US has rebuffed the request, with a senior US administration official telling Reuters there were “no plans to provide US military assistance at this time”.


A Haitian police asks a woman to move away from a gate at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.CREDIT:AP

The stunning request for US military support recalled the tumult following Haiti’s last presidential assassination, in 1915, when an angry mob dragged President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam out of the French Embassy and beat him to death.

In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Haiti, justifying the American military occupation — which lasted nearly two decades — as a way to avert anarchy.

But the Biden administration has so far given no indication it will provide military assistance.

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For now, it only plans to send FBI officials to assist with the ongoing investigation into a crime that has plunged Haiti, a country already wracked by gaping poverty and gang violence, into a destabilising battle for power and constitutional standoff.

On Friday, a group of lawmakers declared loyalty and recognised Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s dismantled senate, as provisional president in a direct challenge to the interim government’s authority. They also recognised as Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whom Moïse had selected to replace Joseph a day before he was killed but who had not yet taken office or formed a government.

Joseph expressed dismay that others would try to take advantage of Moïse’s murder for political gain.

“I’m not interested in a power struggle,” said Joseph, who assumed leadership with the backing of police and the military. “There’s only one way people can become president in Haiti. And that’s through elections.”

Joseph spoke as more details emerged of a killing that increasingly has taken the air of murky, international conspiracy involving a Hollywood actor, a shootout with gunmen holed up in a foreign embassy and a private security firm operating out of a cavernous warehouse in Miami.



Haiti is a country on edge tonight after the President of the small Caribbean nation was assassinated in his own home.

Among those arrested are two Haitian Americans, including one who worked alongside Sean Penn following the nation’s devastating 2010 earthquake. Police have also detained or killed what they described as more than a dozen “mercenaries” who were former members of Colombia’s military.



Some of the suspects were seized in a raid on Taiwan’s Embassy where they are believed to have sought refuge. National Police Chief Léon Charles said another eight suspects were still at large and being sought.

The attack, which took place at Moïse’s home before dawn Wednesday, also seriously wounded his wife, who was flown to Miami for surgery. Joseph said he has spoken to the first lady but out of respect for her mourning has not inquired about the attack.

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Colombian officials said the men were recruited by four companies and travelled to the Caribbean nation in two groups via the Dominican Republic. US-trained Colombian soldiers are heavily sought after by private security firms and mercenary armies in global conflict zones because of their experience in a decades-long war against leftist rebels and powerful drug cartels.

In an unexplainable twist would have surely outed any highly sensitive mission, some of the men posted on Facebook photos of themselves visiting the presidential palace and other tourist spots in the Dominican Republic, which shares Hispaniola Island with Haiti.



It’s not known who masterminded the attack. And numerous questions remain about how the perpetrators were able to penetrate the president’s residence posing as US Drug Enforcement Administration agents, meeting little resistance from those charged with protecting the president.

Besides the Colombians, among those detained by police were two Haitian Americans.

Investigative Judge Clément Noël told Le Nouvelliste that the arrested Americans, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, said the attackers originally planned only to arrest Moïse, not kill him. Noël said Solages and Vincent were acting as translators for the attackers, the newspaper reported on Friday.


US soldiers stand guard on the rooftop of the US Embassy.CREDIT:AP

Solages, 35, described himself as a “certified diplomatic agent,” an advocate for children and budding politician on a now-removed website for a charity he started in 2019 in south Florida to assist resident of his home town of Jacmel, on Haiti’s southern coast.



He worked briefly as a driver and bodyguard for a relief organisation set up by Penn following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed 300,000 Haitians and left tens of thousands homeless. He also lists as past employers the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. His Facebook page, which was also taken down following news of his arrest, features photos of armoured military vehicles and a shot of himself standing in front of an American flag.


Haitians outside the U.S. Embassy amid rumors on radio and social media that the US will be handing out exile and humanitarian visas. CREDIT:AP

Joseph refused to finger any attackers but said that Moïse had earned numerous enemies while attacking powerful oligarchs who for years profited from overly generous state contracts.

Some of those elite insiders are now the focus of investigators, with authorities asking that presidential candidate and well-known businessman Reginald Boulos and former Senate president Youri Latortue meet with prosecutors early next week for questioning. No further details were provided and none of the men have been charged.

Analysts say whoever plotted the brazen attack likely had ties to a criminal underworld that has flourished in recent years as corruption and drug trafficking have become entrenched. Even before Moïse’s murder, Port-au-Prince already had been on edge due to the growing power of gangs that displaced more than 14,700 people last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory.

AP

Haiti requests US troops after president's assassination, as more details of suspects emerge

Seventeen of the Colombian suspected mercenaries had retired from the army, investigators in Colombia say.

Saturday 10 July 2021

SKY NEWS UK

Image:Police in Haiti patrol the streets amid a state of emergency


Haiti's interim government has asked the US to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilise the country and prepare the way for elections in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moise's assassination.

"We definitely need assistance and we've asked our international partners for help," Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph told The Associated Press.

"We believe our partners can assist the national police in resolving the situation."

Haiti at boiling point after assasination

Haiti's in a state of turmoil after the impoverished country's President was shot dead in his home.


But US President Joe Biden's administration has so far given no indication it will provide military assistance to the Caribbean island.

For now, it only plans to send FBI officials to assist with the ongoing investigation into a crime that has plunged Haiti into a destabilising battle for power and constitutional stand-off.


Colombia will also send its national intelligence directorate and intelligence director for the National Police to help Interpol with its investigations, President Ivan Dunque wrote on Twitter.


Police in Haiti say Mr Moise was executed by a commando unit of 26 Colombian and two Haitian-American mercenaries.

Image:Several of the suspects were paraded at a media briefing on Thursday. Pic: AP

Seventeen of them were captured and paraded in front of journalists at a news conference in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.

National Police chief Leon Charles said the two Americans - James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55 - had come from Florida.

One of them had worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince, he added.

Image:Jovenel Moise was found dead at his home in the early hours of Wednesday

Colombian investigators have said that 17 of the suspects had retired from the Colombian army between 2018 and 2020.

Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's National Police, said 11 of the suspected Colombian mercenaries had travelled to Haiti via Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

Two others flew from Panama to the Dominican capital Santo Domingo before landing in Port-au-Prince, he said.

Guns and passports were also shown at Thursday's news conference. Pic: AP

Solage and Vincent were among the 17 captured following a gun battle with Haitian authorities near Mr Moise's suburban home where he was found dead in the early hours of Wednesday.

Mr Moise, 53, was discovered lying on his back in his bedroom with 12 bullet wounds and his left eye damaged, local tribunal judge Carl Henry Destin said on Friday.

The front door of his home was riddled with bullets and had been forced open, with other rooms in the house ransacked, he added.

Mr Moise's wife Martine, 47, was seriously injured in the attack but is now in a stable condition after being flown to Florida for treatment.

Colombia's director of the National Police Jorge Luis Vargas

As well as the 17 in custody, three other suspects were killed in the struggle with police, and eight are on the run, the Haitian police said.

They are still hunting the mastermind behind the assassination.

Thousands of Haitians gathered outside the US embassy in Port-au-Prince on Friday amid rumours America would be granting people asylum.

The island nation is in a 15-day state of emergency as it grapples with the violent crisis.