Haiti offers bounty on three key suspects in president's killing

PORTAUPRINCE: Haitian authorities on Thursday offered a bounty to those who can help arrest three key suspects in last month's assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

Moise was killed on July 7 when a hit team burst into the presidential residence and shot him dead. His wife Martine was wounded but survived.

Justice Minister Rockefeller Vincent told reporters that the government will offer six million gourdes ($61,000) for help in arresting three high-profile fugitives. The fugitives are Wendelle Coq Thelot, a former Supreme Court judge who was fired by Moise earlier in the year; Joseph Felix Badio, a former anti-corruption official; and John Joel Joseph, a former opposition senator.

Authorities have issued 17 arrest warrants in the probe. More than a month after Moise's assassination, it remains a mystery who ordered and sponsored the killing, in which not a single police officer from the president's security detail was targeted.

Forty-four people have already been arrested as part of the probe. Vincent said they include 20 suspected of carrying out the crime, 18 Colombians, and two Americans of Haitian origin. The deeply unpopular Moise had been governing the impoverished and disaster-plagued nation by decree, as gang violence spiked and Covid-19 spread.

Already reeling from the political crisis, Haiti plunged into further turmoil when a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the country earlier this month, killing over 2,200 people and destroying tens of thousands of buildings. 52,000 bodies unidentified in Mexico, activists say Mexico City, Aug 27 (AFP/APP):More than 50,000 unidentified bodies lie in mass graves or with forensic services in violence-wracked Mexico, a group representing families of the missing said Thursday.