Widow of Haiti’s slain leader returns
THE widow of Haiti’s slain president, Jovenel Moise, returned home at the weekend after being treated in Florida for wounds she suffered in the attack.
Martine Moise, 47, with her right arm in a sling and wearing a bulletproof vest, was received at Port-auPrince airport by interim prime minister Claude Joseph, secretary of state for communications Frantz Exantus wrote on Twitter.
Under grey skies and buffeted by strong winds, the first lady gingerly descended the steps of the plane before firmly shaking hands with those assembled to welcome her.
“The first lady … has just arrived in Haiti to take part in preparations for the state funeral of her husband,” Exantus wrote, posting pictures of Moise disembarking from a private plane accompanied by multiple security agents.
She had spent 10 days in hospital in Miami, Florida, where she had been air-lifted after her husband was gunned down in their home in the
early hours of July 7.
The state funeral services are set to take place on Friday in Cap-Haitien, a historic city in the north of Haiti.
The day before Moise’s widow’s return, Joseph had pledged justice would be served for the president’s assassination. Police chief Leon Charles said on Friday that Haitian authorities were working with international agencies to trace “the masterminds of the assassination”.
Moise, 53, was assassinated by a hit squad made up mostly of Colombian mercenaries. Colombia’s police chief, Jorge Vargas, has said that a former
Haitian justice ministry official, Joseph Felix Badio, gave two of the Colombian mercenaries the order to kill the president. But it’s not clear if Badio was following orders from someone else.
Badio and former opposition senator Joel John Joseph are among several people wanted by the Haitian police.
More than 20 people have been arrested in connection with the killing.
Haitian police have accused a 63-year-old Haitian doctor with close ties to Florida, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, of being a mastermind of the plot and of having “political objectives”.