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Four men, three Haitian-Americans and one Colombian, were extradited from Haiti to the United States on Tuesday for their role in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. American justice, competent to judge the conspiracies hatched on its soil, took over the investigation.
Three Haitian-Americans and a Colombian were extradited to the United States on Tuesday, January 31, for their role in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. The four men, who were detained in Haiti, will be presented Wednesday before a federal judge in Miami, who will tell them the charges against them, according to a statement from the Justice Department. Before them, three men had already been transferred to the United States to be responsible for this assassination.
Jovenel Moïse, 53, was shot dead by an armed commando on the night of July 6-7, 2021, in his private residence in Port-au-Prince, without the intervention of his bodyguards. His death had further exacerbated the chaos in this small poor country in the Caribbean.
Haitian police had quickly arrested about forty suspects, including about twenty former Colombian soldiers, recruited according to them by a Florida-based security firm, CTU. The investigation then fell into the shortcomings of the local justice system. American justice, competent to judge the conspiracies hatched on its soil, took over.
After the first three suspects, she charged two Haitian-American citizens James Solages, 37, and Joseph Vincent, 57, as well as Colombian German Rivera, 44, with “conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping off US soil.”
Regime change
In a separate indictment, she is suing Christian Sanon, a 54-year-old man who also holds dual Haitian-American citizenship and harbored “political ambitions” in Haiti, for “illegal export of goods from the United States.”
Specifically, the US Attorney General accuses James Solages and Christian Sanon of having discussed regime change in Haiti during a meeting in Florida in April 2021. At the end of their meeting, a list of weapons, including rifles, machine guns, grenades, etc. had been shared.
A month later, Christian Sanon ordered equipment for his “private militia”, a force of about twenty Colombians led by German Rivera and to ensure his safety in Haiti. In June, he had sent around twenty bulletproof vests to Haiti without complying with US customs formalities – for which he is now accused.
According to the press release, James Solages, Joseph Vincent and German Rivera had met on July 6, 2021 near the president’s house for a distribution of weapons, and the first had announced that the purpose of the mission was to kill Jovenel Moïse. . The three men are sentenced to life in prison, and Christian Sanon gets 20 years in prison.
With AFP
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