The interim government in Haiti is seeking help after the unrest that followed the assassination of its president.<\/b>
\nHaiti\u2019s interim government has asked the U.S. and UN to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilize the country and prepare for elections in the aftermath of President Jovenel Mo\u00efse\u2019s assassination. The stunning request for U.S. military support recalled the tumult following Haiti\u2019s last presidential assassination, in 1915, when an angry mob dragged President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam out of the French Embassy and beat him to death. In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Haiti, justifying the American military occupation \u2014 which lasted nearly two decades \u2014 as a way to avert anarchy. Mathias Pierre, Haiti\u2019s elections minister, defended the government\u2019s request military assistance, saying in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press that the local police force is weak and lacks resources. \u201cWhat do we do? Do we let the country fall into chaos? Private properties destroyed? People killed after the assassination of the president? Or, as a government, do we prevent?\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not asking for the occupation of the country. We\u2019re asking for small troops to assist and help us…. As long as we are weak, I think we will need our neighbors.\u201d The request was received but there has been no decision, according to a U.S. official familiar, speaking on condition of anonymity because not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But the Biden administration has so far given no indication it will send troops. For now, it only plans to send FBI officials to help investigate a crime that has plunged Haiti, a country already wracked by poverty and gang violence, into a destabilizing battle for power and constitutional standoff. Haiti also sent a letter to the United Nations requesting assistance, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Saturday. The letter asked for troops and security at key installations, according to a UN source speaking on condition of anonymity because details of the letter are private. \u201cWe definitely need assistance and we\u2019ve asked our international partners for help,\u201d Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph told the AP in a phone interview late Friday. \u201cWe believe our partners can assist the national police in resolving the situation.\u201d On Friday, a group of lawmakers announced they had recognized Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti\u2019s dismantled Senate, as provisional president in a direct challenge to the interim government\u2019s authority. They also recognized as prime minister Ariel Henry, whom Mo\u00efse had selected to replace Joseph a day before he was killed but who had not yet taken office or formed a government. One of those lawmakers, Rosemond Pradel, told the AP that Joseph \u201cis neither qualified nor has the legal right\u201d to lead the country. Joseph expressed dismay that others would try to take advantage of Mo\u00efse\u2019s murder for political gain. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in a power struggle,\u201d said Joseph, who assumed leadership with the backing of police and the military. \u201cThere\u2019s only one way people can become president in Haiti. And that\u2019s through elections.\u201d Meanwhile, more details emerged about what increasingly resembled a murky, international conspiracy: a shootout with gunmen holed up in a foreign embassy, a private security firm operating out of a warehouse in Miami and a cameo sighting of a Hollywood star. Among the arrested are two Haitian Americans, including one who worked alongside Sean Penn following the nation\u2019s devastating 2010 earthquake. Police have also detained or killed more than a dozen former members of Colombia\u2019s military. Some of the suspects were seized in a raid on Taiwan\u2019s Embassy where they are believed to have sought refuge. National Police Chief L\u00e9on Charles said another eight suspects were still at large and being sought. The attack at Mo\u00efse\u2019s home before dawn Wednesday also seriously wounded his wife, who was flown to Miami for surgery. She issued a statement Saturday implying the president was killed for trying to develop the country. \u201cThe mercenaries who assassinated the president are currently behind bars,\u201d she said in Creole, \u201cbut other mercenaries currently want to kill his dream, his vision, his ideology.\u201d Colombian officials said the men were recruited by four companies and traveled to Haiti via the Dominican Republic. U.S.-trained Colombian soldiers are often recruited by security firms and mercenary armies in conflict zones because of their experience in a decades-long war against leftist rebels and drug cartels. The sister of one of the dead suspects, Duberney Capador, told the AP that she last spoke to her brother late Wednesday \u2014 hours after Mo\u00efse\u2019s murder \u2014 when the men, holed up in a home and surrounded, were desperately trying to negotiate their way out of a shootout. \u201cHe told me not to tell our mother, so she wouldn\u2019t worry,\u201d said Yenny Capador, fighting back tears. It\u2019s not known who masterminded the attack. And questions remain about how the perpetrators were able to penetrate the president\u2019s residence posing as U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, meeting little resistance from those charged with protecting the president. Capador said her brother, who retired from the Colombian army in 2019 with the rank of sergeant, was hired by a private security firm with the understanding he would be providing protection for powerful individuals in Haiti. Capador said she knew almost nothing about the employer but shared a picture of her brother in a uniform emblazoned with the logo of CTU Security \u2014 a company based in Doral, a Miami suburb popular with Colombian migrants. The wife of Francisco Uribe, who was among those arrested, told Colombia\u2019s W Radio that CTU offered to pay the men about $2,700 a month \u2014 a paltry sum for a dangerous international mission but far more than what most of the men, noncommissioned officers and professional soldiers, earned from their pensions. Uribe is under investigation in the alleged murder of an unarmed civilian in 2008 who was presented as someone killed in combat, one of thousands of extrajudicial killings that rocked Colombia\u2019s U.S.-trained army more than a decade ago. CTU Security was registered in 2008 and lists as its president Antonio Intriago, who is also affiliated with several other Florida-registered entities, some since dissolved, including the Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy, the Venezuelan American National Council and Doral Food Corp. CTU\u2019s website lists two addresses, one of which is a gray-colored warehouse that was shuttered Friday with no sign indicating who it belonged to. The other is a small suite under a different company\u2019s name in a modern office building a few blocks away. A receptionist said Intriago stops by every few days to collect mail and hold meetings. Intriago, who is Venezuelan, did not return phone calls and an email seeking comment. \u201cWe are the ones who are most interested in clarifying what happened, so that my brother\u2019s reputation does not remain like it is,\u201d said Capador. \u201cHe was a humble, hardworking man. He had honors and decorations.\u201d Besides the Colombians, those detained by police included two Haitian Americans. Investigative Judge Cl\u00e9ment No\u00ebl told Le Nouvelliste that the arrested Americans, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, said the attackers planned only to arrest Mo\u00efse, not kill him. No\u00ebl said Solages and Vincent were acting as translators for the attackers, the newspaper reported Friday. Solages,35, described himself as a \u201ccertified diplomatic agent,\u201d an advocate for children and budding politician on a now-removed website for a charity he started in 2019 in south Florida to assist resident of his Haitian hometown of Jacmel. He worked briefly as a driver and bodyguard for a relief organization set up by Penn following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed 300,000 Haitians and left tens of thousands homeless. He also lists as past employers the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. His now-deactivated Facebook page features photos of armored military vehicles and an image of himself in front of an American flag. Calls to the charity and Solages\u2019 associates went unanswered. However, a relative in south Florida said Solages doesn\u2019t have any military training and doesn\u2019t believe he was involved in the killing. Joseph refused to specify who was behind the attack, but said that Mo\u00efse had earned numerous enemies while attacking oligarchs who for years profited from overly generous state contracts. Some of those elite insiders are now the focus of investigators, with authorities asking that presidential candidate and businessman Reginald Boulos and former Senate President Youri Latortue meet prosecutors next week for questioning. No further details were provided and none of the men have been charged. Analysts say whoever plotted the brazen attack likely had ties to a criminal underworld that has flourished amid corruption and drug trafficking. The growing power of gangs displaced more than 14,700 people in Haiti last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory. Hundreds of Haitians gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince Friday pleading for a way out of the country. Women carried babies and young men waved passports and ID cards as they cried out, \u201cRefuge!\u201d and \u201cHelp!\u201d \u201cThis country has nothing to offer,\u201d said 36-year-old Thermidor Joam. \u201cIf the president can be killed with his own security, I have no protection whatsoever if someone wants to kill me.\u201d Prosecutors also want to interrogate members of Mo\u00efse\u2019s security detail, including security coordinator Jean Laguel Civil and Dimitri H\u00e9rard, the head of the General Security Unit of the National Palace. \u201cIf you are responsible for the president\u2019s security, where have you been?,\u201d Port-au-Prince prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude was quoted as telling French-language newspaper Le Nouvelliste. \u201cWhat did you do to avoid this fate for the president?\u201d<\/p>\n