Former Haitian president returns to cheers
Questions over who will lead the country remain
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former President JeanBertrand Aristide returned to Haiti on Friday after a nearly a month in Cuba, thrilling hundreds of supporters who gathered at the airport at a time of tensions over the recent assassination of the country’s leader.
Mr. Aristide, a charismatic yet divisive figure in Haiti who was receiving unspecified medical treatment in Cuba, arrives back in a country simmering with tension over the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
Colombian Police Chief Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas on Friday accused a former Haitian government official of ordering ex-Colombian soldiers to kill Mr. Moïse. He said Joseph Felix Badio told Colombians Duberney Capador and Germán Rivera that “what they have to do is kill the president of Haiti.”
Gen. Vargas said Mr. Badio gave that order roughly three days before the assassination during a meeting in Haiti with the two Colombians, who had been in the country since May 10.
Mr. Capador was killed in a shootout with Haitian police hours after Mr. Moïse was slain. Mr. Rivera remains detained in Haiti while police are still searching for Mr. Badio, who previously worked for Haiti’s Justice Ministry and then the government’s anti-corruption unit until he was fired in May.
More than 20 suspects have been arrested, the majority of them former Colombian soldiers. At least three other suspects were killed, and police have said they are still looking for at least seven others.
Meanwhile, throngs of Aristide supporters cheered when they saw the former president arrive. They had arrived a couple of hours before the plane landed, holding pictures of the former priest, some saying, “The king is back!”
Mr. Aristide was taken home in an ambulance that made its way through the crowd. Some touched the vehicle’s windows before being pushed away by police. Some supporters lingered outside after the ambulance entered Mr. Aristide’s home.
Joel Edouard “Pacha” Vorbe, an executive committee member of Mr. Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party, told The Associated Press that Mr. Aristide “is completely recovered,” although he didn’t have details about his condition.
Mr. Aristide’s return adds a potentially volatile element
to an already tense situation in a country facing a power vacuum. Mr. Aristide has long been one of Haiti’s most polarizing politicians and is still popular with many.
He became a global resistance figure when, as a slum priest known for fiery oratory, he led a movement that ousted the hated dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in 1986.
He was elected president in 1990, forced out in a military coup a year later and restored to power by the U.S. military in 1994 to serve out the remainder of his term.
As a champion of the poor and advocate of leftist “liberation theology,” he was deeply hated by members of the elite.
Re-elected in 2000, he was ousted four years later following student protests and a rebellion led by former supporters, opponents with ties to the elite and the old Duvalierist regime. Mr. Aristide spent seven years in exile in South Africa before returning in 2011. He has largely kept a low profile, except when campaigning for his party’s unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2016.