Prosecutor seeks to charge PM, is replaced

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI » A new chief prosecutor was sworn in Tuesday just hours after his predecessor asked a judge to charge Prime Minister Ariel Henry in the slaying of the president and to bar him from leaving Haiti, a move that could further destabilize a country roiled by turmoil following the assassination and a recent major earthquake.

The request filed by Portau-Prince prosecutor BedFord Claude, who was fired by Henry, came on the same day that the prosecutor had asked that the prime minister come to a meeting and explain why he spoke twice with a key suspect in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse just hours after the killing.

“There are enough compromising elements ... to prosecute Henry and ask for his outright indictment,” Claude wrote before he was replaced by Frantz Louis Juste, a prosecutor who oversaw the case involving the deaths of more than a dozen children in a fire at an orphanage near Port-auPrince last year.