REELING HAITI REQUESTS US TROOPS
Interim leader makes appeal as nation reels
Extraordinary appeal for military assistance follows its president’s assassination this week.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti’s interim government has asked the U.S. to deploy troops to stabalize the country and protect key infrastructure such as oil reserves, its sea port and international airport in the aftermath of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
“We definitely need assistance and we’ve asked our international partners for help,” interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph told The Associated Press. “We believe our partners can assist the national police in resolving the situation.”
The U.S. has agreed to send senior officials from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to Haiti to assist the government’s investigation of the assassination, the White House announced Friday.
“The United States remains engaged and in close consultations with our Haitian and international partners to support the Haitian people in the aftermath of the assassination of the president,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
The FBI released a statement saying: “The FBI is currently engaging with the U.S. Embassy in Haiti and our law enforcement partners to determine how we can best support this effort.”
Joseph said that he was dismayed by opponents who’ve tried to take advantage of Moïse’s murder to seize political power — an indirect reference to a group of lawmakers have declared their loyalty and recognized Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s dismantled senate, as provisional president and Ariel Henry, whom Moïse designated as prime minister a day before he was killed, as prime minister.
“I’m not interested in a power struggle,” Joseph said in the brief phone interview, without mentioning Lambert by name. “There’s only one way people can become president in Haiti. And that’s through elections. So I’m asking everyone to work together so the country can have an elected president.”
Meanwhile, Colombians implicated in the assassination were recruited by four companies and traveled to the Caribbean nation in two groups via the Dominican Republic, the head of Colombia’s police said Friday.
Haitian National Police Chief Léon Charles said 17 suspects have been detained in the brazen killing of Moïse that stunned a nation already reeling from poverty, widespread violence and political instability.
As the investigation moved forward, the killing took on the air of a complicated international conspiracy. Besides the Colombians, among those detained by police were two Haitian Americans, who have been described as translators for the attackers. Some of the suspects were seized in a raid on Taiwan’s Embassy where they are believed to have sought refuge.
At a news conference in Colombia’s capital of Bogota, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia said four companies had been involved in the “recruitment, the gathering of these people” implicated in the assassination, although he did not identify the companies because their names were still being verified.
Two of the suspects traveled to Haiti via Panama and the Dominican Republic, Vargas said, while a second group of 11 arrived in Haiti on July 4 from the Dominican Republic.
Another eight suspects are still at large, said Charles.
“We are going to bring them to justice,” the police chief said, as the 17 handcuffed suspects sat on the floor during a news conference Thursday.
Investigative Judge Clément Noël told the French-language newspaper Le Nouvelliste that the Haitian Americans arrested, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, said the attackers originally planned only to arrest Moïse, not kill him. Noël said Solages and Vincent were acting as translators for the attackers, the newspaper reported Friday.
The same newspaper quoted Port-au-Prince prosecutor BedFord Claude as saying he ordered an investigative unit of the National Police Force to interrogate all the security agents close to Moïse. These include Moise’s security coordinator Jean Laguel Civil and Dimitri Hérard, head of the General Security Unit of the National Palace.
“If you are responsible for the president’s security, where have you been? What did you do to avoid this fate for the president?” Claude said.
The attack, which took place at Moïse’s home before dawn Wednesday, also seriously wounded his wife, who was flown to Miami for treatment.
Joseph, the interim prime minister, assumed leadership with the backing of police and the military and declared a two-week “state of siege.” Port-au-Prince already has been on edge amid the growing power of gangs that displaced more than 14,700 people last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory.