Haitian justice has indicted around fifty people, including former First Lady Martine Moïse, former Prime Minister Claude Joseph and former police chief, Léon Charles, for their alleged involvement in the assassination of the president. Jovenel Moïse in 2021.
AyiboPost published online Monday what it presents as the order of the judge responsible for investigating the case, a 122-page document “resulting from around ten hearings” which does not, however, “clearly identify the intellectual authors of the assassination, nor the financial arms,” notes the media.
According to this document, the magistrate requested the referral of Ms. Moïse and 50 other people to the criminal court “to be tried on the facts of criminal conspiracy, armed robbery, terrorism, assassination and of complicity in assassination, crimes committed to the prejudice” of President Moïse.
“The consistent charges and the indications of involvement of the former First Lady (Martine Moïse) in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse are sufficient,” notes this document, which specifies that “the statements of the former First Lady (…) are so tainted with contradictions that they leave something to be desired and discredit it.”
The former interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and the former director general of the national police Léon Charles are among the individuals charged, the order stating “sufficient indications” of complicity in the assassination of the head of the Haitian state for both.
On July 7, 2021, Jovenel Moïse was shot and killed in his private residence at the age of 53 by a commando of more than 20 people, mainly Colombian mercenaries, without his bodyguards intervening. Martine Moïse herself was injured during the attack.
On February 9, Joseph Vincent, a Haitian-American accused of having participated in his assassination, was sentenced in Florida, in the United States, to life imprisonment.
American justice had launched proceedings against 11 people accused of being involved in the assassination, on the grounds that the plot had been hatched in Florida. Four of them were sentenced to life in prison, including Joseph Vincent who pleaded guilty in December.
Haiti faces a serious political, security and humanitarian crisis, with armed gangs having taken control of entire swaths of the country, and the number of homicides having more than doubled in 2023, and the assassination of Mr. Moise plunged the poorest country on the American continent even more in chaos.
