The arrest in Haiti of more than a dozen former Colombian soldiers in connection with Wednesday’s assassination of President Jovenel Moïse initially provoked shock …
The arrest in Haiti of more than a dozen former Colombian soldiers in connection with Wednesday’s assassination of President Jovenel Moïse initially provoked shock and shame in Colombia and calls for swift justice. « There’s no way Colombia should be making international headlines due to a group of criminals and hitmen, » Colombian Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez said Friday after the handcuffed Colombians were paraded before TV cameras in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. « They must face the full weight of justice. » But some officials and analysts now say that the Colombians, who claim to have been recruited by private security firms in Haiti, are being used as scapegoats. They point out that Moïse had numerous enemies at home — ranging from political opponents to powerful criminal gangs — while no clear motive has emerged for why the Colombians would have targeted Moïse. The Center for Analysis and Research on Human Rights, an independent Haitian organization, has questioned how the assassins could so easily gain entry to the president’s bedroom and carry out their attack without killing or injuring any member of the presidential guard. Indeed, Steven Benoit, an opposition senator in Haiti, blamed Moïse’s security detail for the attack that left the president riddled with bullets and his left eye gouged out. First lady Martine Moïse was also injured in the attack and is now recovering in a Florida hospital.
