After an eight-week trial, a federal jury in Miami on Friday found four South Florida men guilty of plotting to assassinate President Jovenel Mo\u00efse of Haiti five years ago, in a case that has still left many people wondering who actually ordered the hit.<\/p>\n
The four defendants were all linked to a small security firm based in Miami, Counter Terrorism Unit Federal Academy. The owners claimed they believed they were acting on a legitimate Haitian court order when they hired a team of more than two dozen Colombian former soldiers to overthrow, not kill, Mr. Mo\u00efse, who at the time was an unpopular president.<\/p>\n
The defendants said that when the mercenaries arrived, Mr. Mo\u00efse was already dead.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mo\u00efse, 53, was gunned down in his bedroom in the early hours of July 7, 2021.<\/p>\n
His death unleashed a yearslong spiral of gang violence and mayhem in Haiti. More than one million people have fled their homes in recent years. And with large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, too unsafe to transit, officials have not been able to hold elections to select Mr. Mo\u00efse\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy this awful cruelty, this shocking brutality? So they could install a puppet as Haiti\u2019s president,\u201d Jason Wu, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, said during the government\u2019s closing argument.<\/p>\n
Mr. Wu said the defendants planned to cash in on future contracts with a new government as part of a multibillion-dollar plan to develop the impoverished country. They were motivated by their \u201cgreed, their arrogance and their lust for power,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Defense lawyers said the Colombian commandos had been hired to provide security for the Haitian authorities to arrest Mr. Mo\u00efse in connection with crimes against the state. Their plan was supposedly to detain Mr. Mo\u00efse and install a handpicked president in his place.<\/p>\n
After two days of deliberation, all four defendants were found guilty of five counts relating to conspiring to kill or kidnap the president and providing material support for the plot, as well as violating the U.S. Neutrality Act by undertaking an unlawful foreign military expedition.<\/p>\n
The charges carry potential life sentences.<\/p>\n
The defendants included the security firm\u2019s owners, Arc\u00e1ngel Pretel, 53, a Colombian-born former F.B.I. informant, and Antonio Intriago, 63, a Venezuelan American.<\/p>\n
The other two defendants were James Solages, 40, a Haitian American who worked in the maintenance department of a senior living center in South Florida before joining the security firm in Haiti, and Walter Veintemilla, 57, a wealthy Ecuadorean American mortgage and insurance broker who prosecutors said was the \u201cmoney man\u201d who helped finance the operation.<\/p>\n
Mr. Intriago buried his forehead in his hands as the verdict was read. Some of the defense lawyers consoled their clients with hugs. David Howard, Mr. Pretel\u2019s lawyer, patted his client\u2019s back and walked around the defense table to offer his sympathy to each one of the defendants.<\/p>\n
Six other people have already pleaded guilty for their role in the plot, with all but one sentenced to life in prison.<\/p>\n
While the trial cast a light on the murky circumstances behind Mr. Mo\u00efse\u2019s death, it still left doubts about who was behind the assassination plot. Much of the evidence in Miami was shrouded in secrecy because it involved U.S. government informants and was filed under restrictive rules for classified national security matters.<\/p>\n
A medical expert for the defense testified that two bullets retrieved from the president\u2019s body did not match his injuries. Defense lawyers theorized it had been planted as part of a parallel Haitian conspiracy to frame the Colombians and the security firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bullet is pristine,\u201d said Jonathan Friedman, Mr. Solages\u2019s lawyer. \u201cSomething does not smell right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of an illness, a fifth defendant, Christian Sanon, a Haitian American pastor, is expected to be tried later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After an eight-week trial, a federal jury in Miami on Friday found four South Florida men guilty of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1612,2126,12992,9937,5037,8,4689,16038,16040,16037,16036,9,10867,16035,16039,7,13,6237,16041,16042],"class_list":{"0":"post-26183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-antonio","9":"tag-colombia","10":"tag-decisions-and-verdicts","11":"tag-defense-and-military-forces","12":"tag-haiti","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-international-relations","15":"tag-intriago","16":"tag-james-1985","17":"tag-jovenel-1968","18":"tag-moise","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-politics-and-government","21":"tag-port-au-prince-haiti","22":"tag-solages","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-states-international-relations","26":"tag-veintemilla","27":"tag-walter"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116540104073818048","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}