President’s wife gives a public statement

The hospitalized wife of Haiti’s assassinated President Jovenel Moise has given her first public statement since being wounded in the attack that killed him, accusing enemies of wanting “to kill his dream, his vision, his ideology.”

Martine Moise issued the recorded statement in Creole from the Miami hospital where she was being treated for wounds suffered in the attack early Wednesday, and also posted a version on her Twitter account Saturday.

“I’m alive, thanks to God,” she said in the recording. “You have to be a notorious criminal without guts to assassinate a president like Jovenel Moise with impunity without giving him the chance to speak. You knew who the president was fighting against.

“These people hired mercenaries to kill the president and his family because of the projects of roads, electricity, drinking water supply, organization of the referendum and elections …”

Police say they have arrested more than a dozen people — most of them retired Colombian soldiers — and are searching for more, but it remained unclear who had hired the team that attacked the president’s house.