An Ally’s Home, Taiwan’s De-Facto Embassy: Moïse’s Assassins Captured in Bizarre Places

0
189

An Ally’s Home, Taiwan’s De-Facto Embassy: Moïse’s Assassins Captured in Bizarre Places

In the two-day manhunt after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Haitian National Police (PNH) apprehended 19 suspects, including 17 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans. All of the men were found hiding out inside the capital city of Port-au-Prince and in places that raise more questions than they answer.

The PNH said Thursday that the hit squad, which killed Moïse and injured his wife, Martine, at their home in a Port-au-Prince suburb early Wednesday morning, had consisted of 28 “foreigners;” the other nine were killed in a shootout with police, all of them reported to be Colombian. They are still on the trail of the masterminds of the operation, with a two-week state of emergency declared on Wednesday giving them sweeping powers to search homes, blockade roads, and other sundry necessary measures to bring the perpetrators to justice.

However, the men were found in different groups and in strange locations.

Taiwanese De-Facto Embassy

The Embassy of the partially-recognized Republic of China (Taiwan) to Haiti reported Friday morning that 11 of the men had been apprehended inside the diplomatic compound in the suburb of Pétion-Ville, barely a mile from the Pelerin 5 neighborhood where Moïse’s house is located.

“The Haiti police commenced an operation at around 4 pm on July 8, arresting 11 armed suspects. The operation went smoothly, and the suspects did not resist arrest,” Ou added.

Accordingly, Taipei has worked to court Port-au-Prince’s continued friendship, with Moïse and President Tsai Ing-Wen visiting each other’s nations in 2019 and Tsai pledging support for infrastructure projects in Haiti.

House Connected to Moïse’s Ally

The two American mercenaries, James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, were arrested with several others at a house owned by Magalie Habitant, a major figure in Moïse’s Tet Kale party. She claimed that the house, located in Thomassin, about a mile from Moïse’s Pelerin home but in the opposite direction from the embassy, was not hers.

​Habitant was appointed by Moïse to head the Metropolitan Solid Waste Collection Service (SMCRS) in 2017, but was unceremoniously ejected from the position the following year when the bureau was rolled into a larger National Service for the Management of Solid Residues (SNGRS).

Two months ago, Habitant was accused of “mismanagement and misappropriation of public funds” while serving as SMCRS chief in an investigation by La Fondasyon Je Klere (FJKL), a Haitian civil watchdog group. The group described the agency under her tenure as having been run “like a private shop, in violation of elementary management rules, of the law on public accounting and the decree on the preparation of finance laws,” and tracked unexplained expenditures of 11,259,000 Haitian gourdes ($118,854), among various other unexplained expenses.

Then in March 2021, questions were again raised when she mysteriously served as the pickup driver for three hostages released by another group of mercenaries. She told Port-au-Prince radio station Magik9 that a “concerned body” had asked her to pick the men up, saying it was “of the utmost importance to the country.”

The presence of mercenaries and armed gangs was a staple of Moïse’s presidency, and they have been employed both against protesters and ransacked communities of their own volition, killing, kidnapping and displacing thousands of residents in fights over territory with rival gangs.

How The Commando Arrived

At a news conference in Bogota, Colombia, on Friday, National Police director Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia revealed that the “recruitment, the gathering of these people” in the commando had been carried out by four different companies and trickled into Haiti in the days and weeks prior to the hit.

None of the Colombians’ names have been revealed thus far, but Vargas said that two of the suspects had traveled to Haiti via Panama and the Dominican Republic, the latter of which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti; a second group of 11 men arrived in Haiti on July 4, also via DR.

Often heavily trained by partnership programs with the United States, Colombian soldiers are popular hires for private security firms and mercenary outfits. It is notable that video of the commando assembling outside Moïse’s home just before his death shows the men identifying themselves to Moïse’s guards as agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), a federal law enforcement agency that partners with the Colombian government to run counter-narcotics operations in the country. A highly militarized police force, the DEA also works with US Special Forces to train Colombia’s militarized police.

Edmond Boccit, Haiti’s ambassador to the US, dismissed the notion they could be DEA agents, telling Sputnik “they just wanted to mask the horrible act.”

​According to the Associated Press, Solages previously worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti while in the employ of a private contractor, and describes himself as a “certified diplomatic agent.” He lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The two men claimed to be nothing but translators for the commando, and told police that the mission was to arrest Moïse “within the framework of the execution of a mandate of an investigating judge and not to kill him,” Noel told the paper.

Grappling With the Aftermath

After Moïse’s death, his wife, Martine, who was badly wounded in the attack, was transported to Florida for treatment and was last reported to be in stable condition at a Miami hospital. 

In the power vacuum, acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph declared himself the country’s interim ruler and has been supported by the US, UN, and other international bodies. However, the day before his assassination, Moïse had appointed another man, neurosurgeon Ariel Henry, to succeed Joseph, but according to Boccit, Henry had no chance to organize a government by the time of the crisis. Friday evening, a third contender also emerged: Senate President Joseph Lambert, appointed by the rump Senate composed of just 10 lawmakers.

The US is also sending agents from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to the country to buttress the PNH, along with $5 million toward the PNH budget, the White House has revealed.

Sourse: sputniknews.com

An Ally’s Home, Taiwan’s De-Facto Embassy: Moïse’s Assassins Captured in Bizarre Places

0.00 (0%) 0 votes