Former senator arrested in Jamaica
Unreleased police report links former political opponent to president’s July assassination
PORT-AU-PRINCE Haiti’s National Police said Saturday that a former senator who is a prominent suspect in the July 7, 2021, killing of president Jovenel Moïse has been arrested in Jamaica.
Police spokesperson Gary Desrosiers told The Associated Press that John Joël Joseph was in custody. No further information was immediately available.
Meanwhile, Jamaica Police Superintendent Stephanie Lindsay said that other people were arrested along with Joseph and that authorities were trying to determine whether they are family members.
She said they were arrested before dawn on Saturday and declined to share other details.
Joseph is a Haitian politician and opponent of the Tet Kale party that Moïse belonged to.
A still-unreleased police report obtained by the Associated Press quoted various sources as saying Joseph had several links to the attack, with at least one identifying him among the leaders of it.
The sources said Joseph paid in cash for rental cars used by the attackers and had met with other suspects ahead of the killing, including Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian businessman and evangelical pastor who had expressed desire to lead his country.
Associates have suggested that Sanon was duped by the true masterminds of the assassination. He was arrested shortly after the killing.
The report also stated that the former senator introduced other suspects to Joseph Badio, an alleged leader of the plot who previously worked for Haiti’s Ministry of Justice and the government’s anti-corruption unit until he was fired.
It said phone records show James Solages, a Haitian-American arrested in the case, had a WhatsApp conversation with Joseph regarding preparations for the mission. And it said that Solages told authorities that Joseph, Badio and Rodolphe Jaar — a Haitian citizen and former U.S. government informant arrested Jan. 7 in the Dominican Republic — were among those appointed leaders of the operation.
Badio remains a fugitive, while Dominican officials say Jaar was arrested there at the request of U.S. authorities.
The 122-page police report said authorities visited at least three homes from July 10 to July 21 in efforts to track down John Joël Joseph, finding nothing except for four 12-gauge rifles, ammunition and firearms accessories in the first house that was under his name.
It’s not immediately clear where the former Haitian senator arrested in Jamaica will be taken. Claude Joseph, former minister of foreign affairs who served as interim prime minister after Moïse’s killing, said there is no extradition treaty between Haiti and Jamaica, but since the suspect is Haitian, he could be sent back to his native country.
More than 40 people, including 18 former Colombian soldiers, have been arrested in the killing of Moïse, who was shot several times at his private residence in an attack that also injured his wife.
The sources said John Joël Joseph paid in cash for rental cars used by the attackers and had met with other suspects ahead of the killing