Former Haitian senator Joseph Joel John admitted, Tuesday before a US federal court, to having provided vehicles and met on several occasions with people who orchestrated with him the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
Published on :
2 mins
A former Haitian senator pleaded guilty on Tuesday October 10 in a US federal court to having orchestrated, with others, the assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse, according to court documents consulted by AFP.
Joseph Joel John, 52, admitted to providing vehicles and meeting several times with the other conspirators, in Haiti and Florida, with the aim of killing President Moïse, according to the guilty plea agreement he signed with the parquet.
This ex-senator is the third person charged in the United States in this assassination perpetrated on July 7, 2021. The United States has jurisdiction in the case because the plot was partly hatched in Florida, a southeastern state where a large Haitian diaspora.
A retired Colombian army officer, German Rivera, previously pleaded guilty in September to helping a group of mercenaries assassinate the former Haitian president. And in June, another participant, Rodolphe Jaar, of Haitian and Chilean nationality, was sentenced to life in prison for delivering weapons to the murderers.
Trained commando
Jovenel Moïse was shot and killed at his home near the capital Port-au-Prince by a commando of more than 20 trained people, mainly Colombians, without his guards intervening. The operation initially aimed to kidnap President Moïse but evolved into an assassination, court documents indicate.
An American investigation revealed that two men at the head of the CTU security company in Miami had planned to sequester Jovenel Moïse to replace him with an American-Haitian, Christian Sanon, who wanted to become president of the country.
Lucrative infrastructure projects as well as contracts providing for the supply of military equipment and security forces to the future government of Christian Sanon had been promised to them in exchange for the kidnapping of Jovenel Moïse, according to prosecutors.
Chaos
Since the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Haiti has been in chaos as increasingly violent gangs control most of Port-au-Prince.
Faced with this crisis, the UN Security Council last week gave the green light to send a multinational mission led by Kenya, for which Nairobi said it was ready to provide 1,000 police officers. . However, a Kenyan court seized by the opposition has just temporarily suspended the sending of police officers to Haiti.
With AFP
