With these four new extraditions, American justice takes over in an investigation in a standstill in Haiti, two and a half years after this crime which has deeply destabilized the country.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
Four suspects in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 were extradited Tuesday January 31 to the United States, the American authorities announced. The three American-Haitians and the Colombian who were detained in Haiti will be presented on Wednesday to a federal judge in Miami who will set out the charges against them, according to a statement from the Ministry of Justice. Before them, three men had already been transferred to the United States to respond to this assassination.
Jovenel Moïse, 53, had been shot by an armed commando on the night of July 6 to 7, 2021 in his private residence in Port-au-Prince, without his bodyguards intervening. His death had further aggravated chaos in this poor Caribbean little country. Haitian police quickly arrested around forty suspects, including around twenty former Colombian soldiers, recruited according to her by a security company based in Florida, the CTU. The investigation then stopped the failures of the local judicial system.
The American justice, competent to judge the hatching plots on his soil, took over. After the first three suspects, she charged two American-Haitian nationals James Solages, 37, and Joseph Vincent, 57, as well as the Colombian German Rivera, 44, for “conspiracy in order to commit a murder or an abduction in Outside American soil. “In a distinct indictment, she pursues Christian Sanon, a 54-year-old man also endowed with dual American-Haitian nationality and who fed” political ambitions “in Haiti, for” illegal export of goods from the United States “.
a” private militia “
Concretely, American justice accuses James Solages and Christian Sanon of having discussed, during a meeting in Florida in April 2021, a change of regime in Haiti. At the end of their meeting, a list of weapons, including rifles, machine guns, grenades, etc. had been shared.
A month later, Christian Sanon commanded equipment for his “private militia”, a force of twenty Colombians led by German Rivera and supposed to ensure his security in Haiti. In June, he had sent around twenty bullet -proof vests to Haiti without complaining to the formalities of American customs – which is criticized for him today.
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 arms and the first had announced that the goal of the mission was Kill Jovenel Moses. The three men face life imprisonment, and Christian Sanon, a 20 -year prison sentence.