What's Up Little Haiti

Détails: Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti; Création : 20 juillet 2021

Haiti faces uncertain future as mourning first lady returns

At the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, July 17, 2021, Martine Moise, the wife of assassinated President Jovenel Moise, who was injured in the July 7 attack at their private home, returned to the Caribbean nation on Saturday following her release from a Miami hospital.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti’s political future on Sunday grew murkier after the surprise return of first lady Martine Moïse, who was released from a hospital in Miami where she was treated for injuries following an attack in which the president was assassinated.

Martine Moïse did not make any public statements after she descended a private jet wearing a black dress, a black bulletproof vest, a black face mask and her right arm in a black sling as she mourned for President Jovenel Moïse, who was killed July 7 at their private home.

Some experts — like many in this country of more than 11 million people — were surprised at how quickly she reappeared in Haiti and questioned whether she plans to become involved in the country’s politics.

“The fact that she returned could suggest she intends to play some role,” said Laurent Dubois, a Haiti expert and Duke University professor. “She may intervene in one way or another.”

Martine Moïse arrived just hours after a prominent group of international diplomats issued a statement that appeared to shun interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, the man currently running the country with the backing of police and the military.

Joseph’s name was never mentioned in the statement made by the Core Group, composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

The group called for the creation of “a consensual and inclusive government,” adding, “To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government.”

Henry was designated prime minister a day before Jovenel Moïse was killed. He did not respond to requests for comment.

The U.N., OAS and U.S. State Department did not offer further explanation when contacted.

Given the current state of Haitian politics, Dubois said he believes the arrival of Martine Moïse could have an impact.

“She’s obviously in a position to play a role ... given how wide open things are,” he said, adding that the Core Group’s statement is striking because it makes no reference to Joseph. “One has to wonder whether the developments in the investigation have anything to do with this. They’re all these puzzle pieces that are just changing moment to moment. Right now it seems very hard to figure out how to put these together.”

Authorities in Haiti and Colombia say at least 18 suspects directly linked to the killing have been arrested, the majority of them former Colombian soldiers. At least three suspects were killed and police say they are looking for numerous others. Colombian officials have said that the majority of former soldiers were duped and did not know of the assassination plot.

A day after the killing, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price had said Joseph was the incumbent in the position and was serving as acting prime minister before the assassination: “We continue to work with Claude Joseph as such,” he said.

On July 11, a delegation of representatives from various U.S. agencies traveled to Haiti to review critical infrastructure, talk with Haitian National Police and meet with Joseph, Henry and Haitian Senate President Joseph Lambert in a joint meeting.

The deepening political turmoil has prompted dozens of Haitians to visit the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince in recent days to seek a visa or political asylum.

“We can’t stay anymore in the country,” said Jim Kenneth, a 19-year-old who would like to study medicine in the U.S. “We feel very insecure.”

WASHINGTON POST

U.S. Habit of Backing Strongman Allies Fed Turmoil in Haiti

Washington dismissed warnings that democracy was unraveling under President Jovenel Moïse, leaving a gaping leadership void after his assassination.

July 18, 202

Haiti’s President Is Assassinated

As protesters hurled rocks outside Haiti’s national palace and set fires on the streets to demand President Jovenel Moïse’s resignation, President Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago in 2019, posing cheerfully with him in one of the club’s ornate entryways.

After members of Congress warned that Mr. Moïse’s “anti-democratic abuses” reminded them of the run-up to the dictatorship that terrorized Haiti in decades past, the Biden administration publicly threw its weight behind Mr. Moïse’s claim on power.

And when American officials urged the Biden administration to change course, alarmed that Haiti’s democratic institutions were being stripped away, they say their pleas went unheeded — and sometimes never earned a response at all.

Through Mr. Moïse’s time in office, the United States backed his increasingly autocratic rule, viewing it as the easiest way of maintaining stability in a troubled country that barely figured into the priorities of successive administrations in Washington, current and former officials say.

Even as Haiti spiraled into violence and political upheaval, they say, few in the Trump administration took seriously Mr. Moïse’s repeated warnings that he faced plots against his life. And as warnings of his authoritarianism intensified, the Biden administration kept up its public support for Mr. Moïse’s claim to power, even after Haiti’s Parliament emptied out in the absence of elections and Mr. Moïse ruled by decree.

When Mr. Moïse was assassinated this month, it left a gaping leadership void that set off a scramble for power with the few elected officials remaining. The United States, which has held enormous sway in Haiti since invading the countrymore than 100 years ago, was suddenly urged to send in troops and help fix the mess.

But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, a common refrain emerged: Washington bore part of the blame, after brushing off or paying little attention to clear warnings that Haiti was lurching toward mayhem, and possibly making things worse by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse.

“It was predictable that something would happen,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont. “The message that we send by standing alongside these people is that we think they are legitimate representatives of the Haitian people. They’re not.”

Critics say the American approach to Mr. Moïse followed a playbook the United States has used around the world for decades, often with major consequences for democracy and human rights: reflexively siding with or tolerating leaders accused of authoritarian rule because they advance American interests, or because officials fear instability in their absence.

Mr. Moïse’s grip on power tightened notably under Mr. Trump, who spoke admiringly of a range of foreign autocrats. Mr. Trump was also bent on keeping Haitian migrants out of the United States (they “all have AIDS,” American officials recounted him saying). To the extent that Trump officials focused on Haitian politics at all, officials say, it was mainly to enlist the country in Mr. Trump’s campaign to oust his nemesis in the region: Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.

The Biden administration arrived in January consumed by the pandemic and a surge of migrants at the border with Mexico, leaving little bandwidth for the tumult convulsing Haiti, officials say. It publicly continued the Trump administration policy that Mr. Moïse was the legitimate leader, infuriating some members of Congress with a stance that one senior Biden official now calls a mistake.

“Moïse is pursuing an increasingly authoritarian course of action,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, now the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement with two other Democrats in late December, warning of a repeat of the “anti-democratic abuses the Haitian people have endured” in the past.

“We will not stand idly by while Haiti devolves into chaos,” they said.

In a February letter to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, they and other lawmakers called on the United States to “unambiguously reject” the push by Mr. Moïse, who had already ruled by decree for a year, to stay in power. They urged the Biden administration to push for “a legitimate transitional government” to help Haitians determine their own future and emerge from “a cascade of economic, public health, and political crises.”

But Mr. Biden’s top adviser on Latin America, Juan Gonzalez, said that at the time, the administration did not want to appear to be dictating how the turmoil should be resolved.

“Tipping our finger on the scale in that way could send a country that was already in a very unstable situation into crisis,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

Past American political and military interventions into Haiti have done little to solve the country’s problems, and have sometimes created or aggravated them. “The solution to Haiti’s problems are not in Washington; they are in Port-au-Prince,” Haiti’s capital, Mr. Gonzalez said, so the Biden administration called for elections to take place before Mr. Moïse left office.

“The calculus we made was the best decision was to focus on elections to try to use that as a way to push for greater freedom,” he added.

In reality, critics say, the Biden administration was already tipping the scales by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse’s contention that he had another year in office, enabling him to preside over the drafting of a new Constitution that could significantly enhance the president’s powers.

Mr. Moïse was certainly not the first leader accused of autocracy to enjoy Washington’s backing; he was not even the first in Haiti. Two generations of brutal Haitian dictators from the Duvalier family were among a long list of strongmen around the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere who received resolute American support, particularly as allies against Communism.

“He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt supposedly said of one of them (though accounts vary about whether the president was referring to American-backed dictators in Nicaragua or in the Dominican Republic).

The debate has continued in both Democratic and Republican administrations about how hard to push authoritarian allies for democratic reforms. Once the threat of Communist expansionism faded, American administrations worried more about instability creating crises for the United States, like a surge of migrants streaming toward its shores or the rise of violent extremism.

Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy official in multiple Republican administrations and a special representative on Venezuela in the Trump administration, argued that Washington should support democracy when possible but sometimes has few alternatives to working with strongmen.

“In Haiti, no one has developed a good formula for building a stable democracy, and the U.S. has been trying since the Marines landed there a hundred years ago,” he said.

Early on in the Trump administration, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former co-star on “The Apprentice” and new adviser to the president, began pressing Mr. Trump and his aides to engage with Haiti and support Mr. Moïse.

Officials were wary. Haiti supported Venezuela at two meetings of the Organization of American States in 2017, turning Mr. Moïse into what one official called an enemy of the United States and scuttling her efforts to arrange a state visit by him.

“I believed that a state visit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Moïse would have been a strong show of support for Haiti from the U.S. during a time of civil unrest,” Ms. Newman said, adding in a separate statement: “Jovenel was a dear friend and he was committed to being a change agent for his beloved Haiti.”

The episode underscored the degree to which some top Trump officials viewed Haiti as just a piece of its strategy toward Venezuela. And in the eyes of some lawmakers, Mr. Trump was not going to feel empathy for Haiti’s problems.

“We are all aware of his perception of the nation — in that he spoke about ‘s-hole’ countries,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus.

By 2019, nationwide protests grew violent in Haiti as demonstrators demanding Mr. Moïse’s ouster clashed with the police, burned cars and marched on the national palace. Gang activity became increasingly brazen, and kidnappings spiked to an average of four a week.

Mr. Trump and his aides showed few public signs of concern. In early 2019, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Moïse at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a meeting with Caribbean leaders who had lined up against Mr. Maduro of Venezuela.

By the next year, Mr. Moïse’s anti-democratic practices grew serious enough to command the attention of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who publicly warned Mr. Moïse against delaying parliamentary elections.

But beyond a few statements, the Trump administration did little to force the issue, officials said.

“No one did anything to address the underlying weaknesses, institutionally and democratically,” over the past several years, said Peter Mulrean, who served as the American ambassador to Haiti from 2015 to 2017. “And so we shouldn’t really be surprised that the lid blew off again.”

After Mr. Biden’s election, lawmakers and officials in Washington took up the issue with new urgency. Mr. Moïse, who came to office after a vote marred by low turnout and allegations of fraud, had been ruling by decree for a year because the terms of nearly all members of Parliament had expired and elections to replace them were never held.

Mr. Moïse won a five-year term in 2016, but did not take office until 2017 amid the allegations of fraud, so he argued that he should stay until 2022. Democracy advocates in Haiti and abroad cried foul, but on Feb. 5, the Biden administration weighed in, supporting Mr. Moïses’s claim to power for another year. And it was not alone: International bodies like the Organization of American States took the same position.

Mr. Blinken later criticized Mr. Moïse’s rule by decree and called for “genuinely free and fair elections this year.” But the Biden administration never withdrew its public position upholding Mr. Moïse’s claim to remain in office, a decision that Rep. Andy Levin, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, blamed for helping him retain his grip on the country and continue its anti-democratic slide.

“It’s a tragedy that he was able to stay there,” Mr. Levin said.

The Biden administration has rebuffed calls by Haitian officials to send troops to help stabilize the country and prevent even more upheaval. A group of American officials recently visited to meet with various factions now vying for power and urge them “to come together, in a broad political dialogue,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

The Americans had planned to visit the port to assess its security needs, but decided against it after learning that gangs were occupying the area, blocking the delivery of fuel.

“How can we have elections in Haiti when gang members control 60 percent of the territory?” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network. “It will be gangs that organize the elections.”

David Kirkpatrick contributed reporting.

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME. (July 18, 2021)
Jer. 23, 1-6; Ps. 23; Eph. 2, 13-18; Mk. 6, 30-34 By +Guy Sansaricq

Today, Jesus is introduced to us as the GOOD SHEPHERD in fulfillment of the prophecies of Jeremiah. In the first reading, we hear God announcing that He would send in due time a good shepherd to teach and guide his chosen people. Jesus stands tall as the ONE who fulfills this prophecy through his teaching and mighty deeds.

We also see Jesus sending his Apostles to do the same, to preach and to heal and expel demons. Today, the Apostles are shown returning from their mission. They are exhausted. The mission is not easy. They had experienced rejection and even insults and persecutions. Jesus calls them to rest in a secluded place. Tired people do not function well. Rest like sleep is a necessity of life. Likewise, a good retreat renews our energy.

But as they try to withdraw from the crowd, the people described as being “like sheep without a shepherd” taking note of their escape followed them. Jesus, seeing the hunger of the people for a saving word, rejoiced and renouncing his project of a time of rest, began to TEACH them at length. What do we learn from these texts?

We must listen to the TEACHINGS of Jesus and not close our ears. We must SEEK understanding. We must encounter JESUS. We must eagerly embrace HIM like the crowds of old, as our SAVIOR, our SHEPHERD. We need to be set free of our demons and be healed! Let’s this hunger for Jesus’ gift of salvation inflame our hearts. Repentance is the first step!

*Former DEA informant, linked to Moïse investigation, turned to agency after assassination*

_BY MICHAEL WILNER, JAY WEAVER, KEVIN G. HALL, AND JACQUELINE CHARLES_

_JULY 12, 2021 10:21 PM, UPDATED 6 HOURS 17 MINUTES AGO_

A suspect in last week’s assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was once a confidential source for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two agency officials told McClatchy late Monday.

The Miami Herald and the McClatchy Washington Bureau have learned that the suspect is Joseph Gertand Vincent, first arrested more than 20 years ago for filing false information on a U.S. passport application and who went on to become an occasional DEA informant.

Vincent, 55, was identified by Haitian authorities over the weekend as an arrested suspect along with another South Florida Haitian emigre named James Solages, 35, who until April was a maintenance director in a Lantana senior-living center. Both men told investigators they were hired as translators.

Information swirled for days, some of it first reported by the Miami Herald, about the DEA’s tie to Vincent, and late Monday the DEA confirmed only that a former informant was among the arrested in Haiti. The subject apparently reached out to the DEA following Moïse’s killing, alerting officials to his link and forcing the DEA to reveal one of its sources — an exceptional development.

A source close to Vincent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the volatile situation in Haiti, which has asked for a U.S. troop presence, confirmed that the South Florida man was indeed once an informant for the DEA. Another news source, also demanding anonymity, said Vincent went by the pseudonym Oliver.

Agency officials would not confirm the identity of the source that they were acknowledging in unusual fashion.

“At times, one of the suspects in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a confidential source to the DEA,” one DEA official said. “Following the assassination of President Moïse, the suspect reached out to his contacts at the DEA.

“A DEA official assigned to Haiti urged the suspect to surrender to local authorities and, along with a U.S. State Department colleague, shared information with the Haitian government that assisted in the surrender and arrest of the suspect and one other individual.”

The DEA announcement is even more stunning because of reports in Haiti that the attackers who killed the president shouted through a loudspeaker that a DEA raid was taking place. The DEA steadfastly denies any knowledge of or involvement in the monumental events that unfolded in impoverished Haiti.

“DEA is aware of reports that President Moïse’s assassins yelled ‘DEA’ at the time of their attack. These individuals were not acting on behalf of DEA,” said the source.

Interim Haitian Police Chief Léon Charles said Sunday that among the items police found in the home of Christian Emmanueal Sanon, an alleged mastermind of the plot, was a hat with DEA written on it and a cache of arms and ammunition.

Sanon is a medical doctor who had worked in the Boynton Beach area. He appears in numerous online videos criticizing the Haitian government. Officials in Haiti allege Sanon hoped to be installed as president of Haiti in the aftermath of the assassination. Solages and Vincent both have said they were not part of any mission to kill the president.

The Justice Department on Monday night issued a statement saying the agency’s initial assessment of the assassination has been completed.

“An initial assessment has been conducted in Haiti by senior U.S. officials. The department will continue to support the Haitian government in its review of the facts and circumstances surrounding this heinous attack,” said Anthony Coley, a DOJ spokesman. “The department will also investigate whether there were any violations of U.S. criminal law in connection with this matter.”

None of the three South Florida suspects appear to have been assigned a lawyer yet, and they have not been made available for interviews. Their version of events, or those offered by the Haitian government cannot be independently confirmed.

The source close to Vincent said the West Palm Beach man worked as a paid informant who helped the DEA facilitate the arrests of drug-trafficking targets, including the infamous Guy Philippe in early 2017.

Philippe, who had been wanted for more than a decade in the United States, was arrested in January 2017 in Haiti. Federal DEA agents brought Philippe, then 48, on a plane to Miami. A source familiar with that operation confirmed that Joseph Vincent was with the Haitian National Police officers when they turned over Philippe to DEA agents for the flight to Miami.

The ex-rebel leader, charged with drug trafficking by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami under a 2005 sealed indictment, had just been elected to a six-year term in the Haitian parliament as a senator from the Grand’Anse area of Haiti.

His arrest came four days before newly elected lawmakers were set to be sworn in. As a senator, Philippe would have been entitled to immunity from arrest or prosecution during his term in office.

Once in custody, Philippe tried to have his indictment dismissed on the basis of his immunity — to no avail. He eventually pleaded guilty to the drug-trafficking conspiracy charges and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Philippe’s leadership in a 2004 coup d’état against then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide led to the president’s ouster, and Human Rights Watch accused him of overseeing unlawful killings. In the aftermath, Philippe — along with other Haitian police officers, politicians and drug traffickers — became entangled in the U.S. crackdown on Haiti as a narcotics hub for Colombian cocaine.

Almost two dozen Haitian suspects, including the deposed president’s security guard, were convicted by federal prosecutors in Miami.

After the guard’s conviction in 2005, he played a pivotal role as a cooperating witness, including in the investigation of Aristide himself, though the former president was never charged. The guard, Oriel Jean, was assassinated in 2015 after returning to Haiti.

Détails: Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti; Création : 17 juillet 2021

Which Way For Haiti?

Mgr Thomas Wenski

Last April, the Most Rev. Max Mezidor, the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, in denouncing a rash of gang violence and kidnappings said, “For some time now, we have been witnessing the descent into hell of Haitian society”.

The surge of violence that has plagued the country for most of the last two years has now also consumed Haiti’s “de facto” President. (“de facto” because many Haitians, including the bishops, held that his term ended in February 2021.). His murder has provoked a social and a constitutional crisis for the Americas’ second independent Republic.

With the assassination of President Jovenel Moise by hired foreign mercenaries, Haiti could easily become the Somalia of the Caribbean. That a number of these mercenaries have themselves been killed by police further raises suspicions. You would think that professional commandos would know not only how to get to the president but also how to successfully elude capture and escape. A Haitian proverb says, “voye wòch kache men” which translates, “the rock thrower hides his hand”. If chaos is to be avoided and Haitians have a chance at a future of hope, those hidden hands need to be exposed and brought to justice.

This is necessary so that this crime does not impede the process of resolving Haiti’s ongoing social and political problems. The bishops of Haiti in the aftermath of Moise’s assassination have called on all sectors of society to put aside personal pride and to return to the table to dialog for the sake of the common good. A consensus on a credible electoral process needs to be forged and, to that end, a transitional government that is seen as legitimate by a majority of Haitians must be established.

But will America or the UN intervening by sending in troops save Haiti from becoming a irredeemably failed state? The first American occupation of Haiti after the 1915 mob killing of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam made some infrastructure improvements (through forced labor) but it arguably left Haiti worse off. Successive interventions including an extended peace keeping mission of the UN have likewise failed to improve the lot of the Haitian people and have contributed little in strengthening the State’s weak institutions. As Jovenel Moise himself admitted in an interview some years ago, the State has no effective presence in more than 30% of the country. Even so, the long-suffering Haitian people have endured the predations of the State as well as its impotence - Haiti has yet to administer its first dose of anti-COVID vaccines. Even Haitians who opposed the Moise’s attempt to remain in power deplored his assassination but were also angered by the fact that the perpetrators were ¨blan¨, i.e., foreigners. So, no! Intervention that offends Haitian sovereignty has never worked and it will not work now. Haiti is a graveyard of foreigners’ good but ill-fated intentions.

From late 2018 and through 2019, the political opposition as well as civil society challenged the government’s drift towards dictatorship in a mostly democratic ways - through sit-ins, strikes, and mass demonstrations (sometimes led by religious). The support of the US government for Moise’s continued rule by decree allowed him to rebuff their calls for a transition to fair and transparent elections, At the same time, armed gangs in Port-au-Prince’s poorer neighborhoods were permitted to run rampant terrorizing the populace with seeming impunity.

Who is behind the Moise assassination? One should ask “cui bono?” Jovenel Moise had boxed himself into a corner as his presidency careened towards dictatorship. He was coming to the end of his options. Perpetrators of his murder as Haitian intellectual, Lionel Trouillot, suggests must be sought “in the network of mafia alliances, in private conflicts, or in the fear of some of his allies of losing everything with him.”

In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that killed some 300,000 people, the Haitian people conducted themselves with remarkable serenity despite the depth of their grief. Days before NGO’s and others arrived on the ground, the Haitians themselves were organizing their tent encampments, providing security, helping each other, rescuing the injured, etc. There was no rioting, no widespread looting. The Haitian people are resourceful enough and resilient enough to find Haitian solutions to Haitian problems, if allowed to do so and if those “hidden hands” are not allowed to continue to throw rocks to thwart the common good and break the fragile bonds of fraternity. That Haiti becomes the Somalia of the Caribbean is a possibility but not an inevitability.

Mgr. Thomas Wenski, Archbishop of Miami

Biden says US ready to help Haiti after assassination of President Jovenel Moïse

By Emily Jacobs

President Biden is condemning the assassination of Haiti’s presidentWednesday, vowing that the US stands “ready to assist” in the wake of the murder.

In a statement, the US commander-in-chief said the nation was “shocked and saddened to hear of the horrific assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the attack on First Lady Martine Moïse of Haiti.

“We condemn this heinous act, and I am sending my sincere wishes for First Lady Moïse’s recovery,” the statement continued, “The United States offers condolences to the people of Haiti, and we stand ready to assist as we continue to work for a safe and secure Haiti.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning as he boarded Air Force One, the commander-in-chief added, “We need a lot more information but it is very worrisome about the state of Haiti.”

The Moïses were gunned down in their home, located in the impoverished Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince, at about 1 a.m. local time Wednesday.

The president, who did not survive, was 53.

Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who revealed news of the attack, said that the first lady was shot during the ambush.

Error! Filename not specified.Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and first lady Martine Moïse were attacked in their Port-au-Prince home. Martine Moïse survived the attack.EPA

Moïse, he said, “was wounded by a bullet and the necessary measures are being taken.”

Joseph also said that he was now in charge of the country.

Calling it a “hateful, inhumane and barbaric act,” Joseph revealed of the attack that, “an unidentified group of individuals, some of whom were speaking in Spanish, attacked the private residence of the President of the Republic and mortally wounded him.”

The primary languages in the Caribbean nation of more than 11 million people are French and Haitian Creole.

The gunmen claimed to be agents with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Miami Herald reported.

But sources told the paper that the assailants, one of whom spoke English with an American accent, were not with the American agency.

The brazen attack happened a day after Moïse named a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to prepare the nation for elections in the next two months for president, a new parliament and local government officials.

The killing comes amid deepening political and economic instability and a spike in gang violence in the poorest country in the Americas. It also comes as the country had grown increasingly unstable and disgruntled under the late president’s rule.

Moïse, who entered office in 2017, had been ruling by decree since January 2020 after legislative elections due in 2018 were delayed in the wake of disputes, including over when his own term ends, according to Agence France-Presse.

Opposition leaders have accused Moïse of seeking to increase his power, including approving a decree that limited the powers of a court that audits government contracts and another that created an intelligence agency controlled by the president.

The opposition has also demanded that he step down, arguing that his term legally ended in February.

Moïse and supporters maintained that his term began when he took office in early 2017, following a chaotic election that forced the appointment of a provisional leader to serve during a year-long gap.

He faced steep pushback from large segments of the population that deemed his mandate illegitimate — and he churned through seven prime ministers in four years.

Joseph was supposed to be replaced this week after only three months in the post.

These troubles come as Haiti still tries to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew that swept through in 2016.

In addition to the political crisis, kidnappings for ransom have spiked in recent months, further reflecting the growing influence of armed gangs in the country.

Error! Filename not specified.“I am sending my sincere wishes for First Lady Moïse’s recovery,” President Joe Biden said about Martine Moïse, who was shot during the ambush.Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Its economic, political and social woes have also deepened, with gang violence increasing heavily in Port-au-Prince, inflation spiraling and food and fuel becoming scarcer at times in a country where 60 percent of the population makes less than $2 a day.

President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic condemned the assassination and ordered the “immediate closure” of its border with Haiti.

“This crime undermines the democratic order of Haiti and the region. Our condolences to his family and the Haitian people,” Abinader said in a statement.

Additional reporting by Yaron Steinbuch and Post wires

Colombian Suspects, Some Former Military, Were Recruited, Police Say

y Associated Press

July 09, 2021 06:39 PM

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI - The Colombians implicated in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise had been recruited by four companies and traveled to the Caribbean nation in two groups via the Dominican Republic, the head of Colombia's police said Friday.

Haitian National Police Chief Léon Charles said 17 suspects have been detained in the killing of Moise.

At a news conference in Colombia's capital, Bogota, General Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia said four companies had been involved in the "recruitment, the gathering of these people" implicated in the assassination, although he did not identify the companies because their names were still being verified.

Two of the suspects traveled to Haiti via Panama and the Dominican Republic, Vargas said, while the second group of 11 arrived in Haiti on Sunday from the Dominican Republic.

Vargas pledged Colombia's full cooperation after Haiti said about six of the suspects, including two of the three killed, were retired members of Colombia's army. U.S.-trained Colombian soldiers are heavily recruited by private security firms in global conflict zones because of their experience in fighting leftist rebels and powerful drug cartels.

Recruited to provide 'protection'

The wife of one former Colombian soldier in custody said he had been recruited by a security firm to travel to the Dominican Republic last month.

The woman, who identified herself only as Yuli, told Colombia's W Radio that her husband, Francisco Uribe, had been hired for $2,700 a month by a company named CTU to travel to the Dominican Republic, where he was told he would provide protection to some powerful families. She last spoke to him, she said, at 10 p.m. Wednesday, almost a day after Moise's killing, and he was on guard duty at a house where he and others were staying.

"The next day he wrote me a message that sounded like a farewell," the woman said. "They were running. They had been attacked. ... That was the last contact I had."

The woman said she knew little about her husband's activities and was unaware he had even traveled to Haiti.

Uribe is under investigation for his alleged role in extrajudicial killings by Colombia's army more than a decade ago. Colombian court records show that he and another soldier were accused in 2008 of killing a civilian whom they later tried to present as a criminal slain in combat.

Besides the Colombians, among those detained by police were two Haitian Americans. Some of the suspects were seized in a raid on the Taiwan Embassy, where they are believed to have sought refuge.

Plan allegedly was to arrest, not kill

Investigative Judge Clément Noël told the French-language newspaper Le Nouvelliste that the Haitian Americans arrested, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, had said the attackers originally had planned only to arrest Moise, not kill him. Noël said Solages and Vincent had been acting as translators for the attackers, the newspaper reported Friday.

The attack, which took place at Moise's home before dawn Wednesday, also seriously wounded his wife, who was flown to the U.S. city of Miami, Florida, for treatment.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports that Haitian Americans were in custody but would not comment.

Solages, 35, described himself as a "certified diplomatic agent," an advocate for children and a budding politician on a now-removed website for a charity he started in 2019 in South Florida to assist residents of his hometown of Jacmel, on Haiti's southern coast.

Solages also said he had worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti, and on his Facebook page, which was also taken down after news of his arrest, he showcased photos of armored military vehicles and of himself standing in front of an American flag.

Canada's foreign relations department released a statement that did not refer to Solages by name but said that one of the men detained for his alleged role in the killing had been "briefly employed as a reserve bodyguard" at its embassy by a private contractor.

Calls to the charity and Solages' associates went unanswered. However, a relative in South Florida said Solages did not have any military training, and that he didn't believe Solages was involved in the killing.

"I feel like my son killed my brother because I love my president and I love James Solages," Schubert Dorisme, whose wife is Solages' aunt, told WPLG in Miami.

The Taiwan Embassy in Port-au-Prince said police had arrested 11 individuals trying to break into the compound early Thursday.

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (JULY 11TH, 2021)
Amos 7, 12-15; Psalm 85; Eph. 1, 3-14; Mk. 6, 7-13 By +Guy Sansaricq.

THE APOSTLES ARE SENT IN MISSION!
So far we have seen Jesus drawing his apostles to Him but today we see him sending them

out. It’s just like the movements of the heart that first sucks the blood in from the lungs and then sends it out to the rest of the body. That is also the normal rhythm of the Apostolate: a) through prayer increasing one’s intimacy with the Lord and then
b) through ministry: bringing Christ to the world.

Ministry is not an easy task. Many will reject the Prophet either because they do not understand his message or because they angrily reject the call to change and repent. The Prophet will respect their freedom and move on to a more welcoming site.

Jesus sets conditions for the success of the Mission: a) the Prophet should not be alone, he must have a companion. They will go two by two. b) They will be completely poor, relying only on God’s Providence: no money, no food, no second tunic, only a walking cane!

So, they went, joyfully announcing Jesus as the Messiah, expelling demons and curing many anointing them with oil. From this let us learn that the MISSION is not an easy task but a mighty struggle against evil. Poverty, love and faith are the weapons that defeat Satan, the enemy behind all our troubles. Let’s learn this lesson!

U.S rebuffs Haiti troops request after president's assassination

WASHINGTON/PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 9 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday rebuffed Haiti's request for troops to help secure key infrastructure after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise by suspected foreign mercenaries, even as it pledged to help with the investigation.

The killing of Moise by a squad of gunmen in the early hours of Wednesday morning at his home in Port-au-Prince pitched Haiti deeper into a political crisis which may worsen growing hunger, gang violence and a COVID-19 outbreak.

Haitian Elections Minister Mathias Pierre said a request for U.S. security assistance was raised in a conversation between interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday. Haiti also made a request for forces to the United Nations Security Council, Pierre said.

But a senior U.S. administration official said there were "no plans to provide U.S. military assistance at this time."

A letter from Joseph's office to the U.S. embassy in Haiti, dated Wednesday and reviewed by Reuters, requested the dispatch of troops to support the national police in reestablishing security and protecting key infrastructure across the country following Moise's assassination.

A similar letter, also dated Wednesday and seen by Reuters, was sent to the U.N. office in Haiti.

"We were in a situation where we believed that infrastructure of the country – the port, airport and energy infrastructure – might be a target," Pierre told Reuters.

Another aim of the request for security reinforcements would be to make it possible to go ahead with scheduled presidential and legislative elections on Sept. 26, Pierre said.

The U.N. political mission in Haiti received the letter and it was being examined, said Jose Luis Diaz, spokesman for the U.N. Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.

“The dispatch of troops under any circumstances would be a matter for the (15-member) Security Council to decide,” he said.

RIDDLED WITH BULLETS

The United States and Colombia said they would send law enforcement and intelligence officials to assist Haiti after a number of their nationals were arrested for Moise's murder.

Police in Haiti said the assassination was carried out by a commando unit of 26 Colombian and two Haitian-American mercenaries. The two Haitian-Americans were identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, both from Florida.

Seventeen of the men were captured - including Solages and Vincent - after a gun battle with Haitian authorities in Petionville, the hillside suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince where Moise resided.

Three others were killed and eight remain at large, according to Haitian police. Authorities are hunting for the masterminds of the operation, they said.

A judge investigating the case told Reuters that Moise was found lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. The front door of the residence had been forced open, while other rooms were ransacked.

"His body was riddled with bullets," Petionville tribunal judge Carl Henry Destin said. "There was a lot of blood around the corpse and on the staircase."

Haitian officials have not given a motive for Moise's killing or explained how the assassins got past his security detail. He had faced mass protests against his rule since taking office in 2017 - first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.

Moise himself had talked of dark forces at play behind the unrest: fellow politicians and corrupt oligarchs who felt his attempts to clean up government contracts and to reform Haitian politics were against their interests.

COMMANDO UNIT

The United States on Thursday pledged to send senior officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security to Haiti as soon as possible to assess the situation and see how best they can assist, the White House said.

A State Department spokesperson said: "We are aware of the arrest of two U.S. citizens in Haiti and are monitoring the situation closely."

The head of Colombia's national intelligence directorate and the intelligence director for the national police will travel to Haiti with Interpol to help with investigations, Colombian President Ivan Duque said on Friday.

Investigators in Colombia discovered that 17 of the suspects had retired from Colombia's army between 2018 and 2020, armed forces commander General Luis Fernando Navarro told journalists on Friday.

Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's national police, said initial investigations had shown that 11 Colombian suspects had traveled to Haiti via the resort city of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Two others traveled by air to Panama, before flying to Dominican capital Santo Domingo and then Port-au-Prince, Vargas said.

CONFUSION OVER POLITICAL CONTROL

The Haitian government declared a 15-day state of emergency on Wednesday to help authorities apprehend the killers but has since urged businesses to reopen.

Stores, gasoline stations and commercial banks reopened on Friday. The streets were quiet, although some supermarkets bustled with people stocking up amid the uncertainty.

Moise's killing has sparked confusion about who is the legitimate leader of the country of 11 million people, the poorest in the Americas, miring it deeper into a political crisis.

Even before Moise's death, the country only had 11 elected officials - himself and 10 senators - given it had postponed legislative elections in 2019 amid violent unrest.

Swaths of the opposition and civil society no longer recognized him as president due to a disagreement over the length of his mandate.

Joseph has taken over the reins of power so far. Pierre, the elections minister, said he would keep that role until presidential and legislative elections are held on Sept. 26.

But Joseph's authority is in dispute by multiple political factions. In the latest move, the remaining third of the Senate on Friday nominated its head, Joseph Lambert, to be interim president.

The senators also urged Joseph to hand over his office as prime minister to Ariel Henry, a physician seen as more of a consensus candidate. Moise had tapped him earlier this week to form a unity government but he had yet been sworn in.

"The Senate secretariat will write to national and international entities as well as to the general director of the Police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that the embassies accredited in Haiti are informed," Lambert told Reuters.

Henry this week told Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste he did not consider Joseph the legitimate prime minister.

"The assassination... has provoked a political and institutional vacuum at the highest level of state," said Haitian opposition politician Andre Michel. "There is no constitutional provision for this exceptional situation."

Reporting by Steve Holland in Washington and Andre Paultre in Port-au-Prince; Additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana, Stefanie Eschenbacher in Mexico City, Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota, Brad Brooks in Tamarac, Daphne Psaledakis, Ali Idrees and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Estailove St-Val in Port-au-Prince; Writing by Sarah Marsh and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Rosalba O'Brien and William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.WASHINGTON/PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 9 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday rebuffed Haiti's request for troops to help secure key infrastructure after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise by suspected foreign mercenaries, even as it pledged to help with the investigation.