U.S. authorities have reported that Haiti has extradited four men suspected of involvement in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise.
The U.S. Department of Justice has reported that the men, three Haitian-Americans and one Colombian, will testify Wednesday in a Florida court on charges of conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping, providing material support and resources resulting in death, and smuggling property.
Specifically, James Solages and Christian Sanon reportedly met in South Florida, United States, to discuss the change of government in Haiti, showing their support for a new candidate. Solages shared with Sanon a list of equipment and weapons needed for the change of executive, including rifles, machine guns, tear gas, ammunition, and other weapons.
Sanon subsequently hired the necessary equipment to support his «private military» forces in Haiti, which consisted of about twenty Colombian nationals with military training.
In June 2021, Solages and two other defendants, Joseph Vincent and Germán Alejandro Rivera García, attempted to arrest the then president to take him by plane to an unknown location, a plan that did not succeed due to the lack of necessary weapons, reads the DOJ statement.
Solages, Vincent and Rivera, along with more people, met at a house near the head of state’s residence on July 6, 2021, where they distributed the weapons and announced the mission. One day later, on July 7, several people entered the president’s house and killed him.
They were then arrested by the Haitian authorities and detained in Haitian custody until their extradition, the U.S. government’s letter reports.
If convicted, three of the defendants face life imprisonment, while the third faces up to 20 years in prison.
With this extradition, there are a total of seven people in U.S. custody charged for their role in the Moise assassination.
On July 7, 2021, some twenty people broke into the home of the then Haitian president, where they met little resistance from the security team, killed Moise and wounded his wife, Martine Moise.
Since Moise’s assassination, the power vacuum aggravated the country’s convulsive political and economic situation into a security crisis, with assassinations and kidnappings on a daily basis.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
