US rebuffs Haiti troops’ help plea
>>WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday rebuffed Haiti’s request for troops to help secure key infrastructure after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise by suspected foreign mercenaries, even as it pledged to help with the investigation.
The killing of Moise by a squad of gunmen in the early hours of Wednesday morning at his home in Port-auPrince pitched Haiti deeper into a political crisis which may worsen growing hunger, gang violence and a Covid19 outbreak.
Haitian Elections Minister Mathias Pierre said a request for US security assistance was raised in a conversation between interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday. Haiti also made a request for forces to the United Nations Security Council, Mr Pierre said.
But a senior US administration official said there were “no plans to provide US military assistance at this time”.
A letter from Mr Joseph’s office to the US embassy in Haiti, dated Wednesday, requested the dispatch of troops to support the national police in re-establishing security and protecting key infrastructure across the country following Moise’s assassination.
A similar letter, also dated Wednesday, was sent to the UN office in Haiti.
“We were in a situation where we believed that infrastructure of the country — the port, airport and energy infrastructure — might be a target,” Mr Pierre said. Another aim of the request for security reinforcements would be to make it possible to go ahead with scheduled presidential and legislative elections on Sept 26, Mr Pierre said.
The UN political mission in Haiti received the letter and it was being examined, said Jose Luis Diaz, spokesman for the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.
“The dispatch of troops under any circumstances would be a matter for the (15-member) Security Council to decide,” he said.
The United States and Colombia said they would send law enforcement and intelligence officials to assist Haiti after a number of their nationals were arrested for Moise’s murder.
Police in Haiti said the assassination was carried out by a commando unit of 26 Colombian and two Haitian-American mercenaries. The two Haitian-Americans were identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, both from Florida.
Seventeen of the men were captured — including Mr Solages and Mr Vincent — after a gun battle with Haitian authorities in Petionville, the hillside suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince where Moise resided.
Three others were killed and eight remain at large, according to Haitian police. Authorities are hunting for the masterminds of the operation, they said.
A judge investigating the case said that Moise was found lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. The front door of the residence had been forced open, while other rooms were ransacked.
“His body was riddled with bullets,” Petionville tribunal judge Carl Henry Destin said. “There was a lot of blood around the corpse and on the staircase.”
Haitian officials have not given a motive for Moise’s killing or explained how the assassins got past his security detail. He had faced mass protests against his rule since taking office in 2017 — first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.
Fellow politicians and corrupt oligarchs who felt his attempts to clean up government contracts and to reform Haitian politics were against their interests.