Palace security chief held by police
Possibility of Haitian insiders considered in assassination
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The head of palace security for President Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated last week at his home, was taken into police custody Thursday, deepening investigators’ focus into the possibility that Haitian insiders had eased the killers’ path.
The palace security chief, Dimitri Herard, made several stopovers in the Colombian capital, Bogota, in the months before the assassination, a Colombian official said. Haitian officials say a group of former soldiers from Colombia, whom they accuse of acting as mercenaries, played a central role in the killing.
On Thursday, the Pentagon also confirmed that some of those Colombian
veterans had received training from the U.S. military, as part of a cooperation between security forces that has stretched for decades. Family members said one them was the chief recruiter for the mercenary force, Duberney Capador, 40.
The revelations came as officials in Haiti, Colombia and the United States all raced to determine who was ultimately behind the assassination of Moïse, and the aims and means of the conspirators.
Several of the central figures under investigation by Haitian authorities gathered in the months before the killing to discuss rebuilding the troubled nation once the president was out of power, according to Haitian police, Colombian intelligence officers and participants in the discussions.
The meetings, conducted in Florida and the Dominican Republic over the past year, appear to connect a seemingly disparate collection of suspects.
Interviews with more than a dozen people involved with the men show that the suspects had been working together for months, portraying themselves in grandiose and often exaggerated terms as well-financed, well-connected power brokers ready to lead a new Haiti with influential U.S. support behind them.
Haitian officials contend that Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a doctor and pastor who divided his time between Florida and Haiti, conspired with the others to take the reins of the country once Moise was removed from power.
On Thursday, Colombian police said the two leaders of the Colombian veterans, Capador and retired Capt. German Alejandro Rivera, conspired with Haitian suspects as early as May to detain the president.
Colombia’s police commander, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, told reporters that it remained unclear when a plan to kidnap Moise turned into a killing. He said that seven Colombian operatives entered the presidential residence on the night of the attack, while the rest guarded the area.
The detention of Herard was confirmed by Marie Michelle Verrier, a spokeswoman for Haiti’s National Police.
Herard was one of four members of the president’s security personnel whom the state prosecutor was planning to call in for questioning this week, as questions remained over how the attackers managed to enter the heavily guarded home.
Questions have focused on reports that none of Herard’s security force fired a shot despite the approach of two dozen armed mercenaries, their entry into the presidential compound, and the eruption of gunfire that killed Moise and seriously injured his wife.
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed that some of the Colombians had received training by the U.S. military as part of a long-term cooperation between the countries.
“A review of our training databases indicates that a small number of the Colombian individuals detained as part of this investigation had participated in past U.S. military training and education programs, while serving as active members of the Colombian Military Forces,” the spokesman, Lt. Col. Kenneth L. Hoffman, said in a statement.
The Pentagon’s review is still underway, said Hoffman, who declined to say exactly how many men received training, when or where they received it, and what the instruction entailed. A U.S. official said that the military has so far identified about half a dozen Colombians who previously received U.S. military instruction.
Some of the U.S. training of Colombian soldiers likely happened in Colombia. But Capador, who recruited the Colombian veterans, traveled to the U.S. for his training, according to dozens of interviews with family members of the recruits, and with men recruited by Capador but didn’t go to Haiti.
Capador is among the three Colombians killed in the aftermath of the assassination.
Interviews with family members also revealed that several of the Colombian veterans had served in the international peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
In Colombia, the defense minister said during a news conference this week that Herard had transited through Bogota six times this year on his way to other Latin American countries, stopping for two days or more on at least one occasion.
Last week, Herard declined to respond to questions from The New York Times, texting: “Unfortunately, after consulting with my lawyer, I am not in a position to comment on this at the very moment as this is an open investigation and a matter of national security.”
When asked, he did not provide the name of his lawyer.