(Santo Domingo) Colombian President Gustavo Petro has acknowledged that his country bears some responsibility for the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise by Colombian mercenaries, saying he would travel to Haiti to try to find a way out of the deep crisis that reigns there.
“I want to go to Haiti, this is a subject for which Colombia has a joint responsibility. First, because Haiti helped us to become a country in the past and, second, because it was Colombian mercenaries who went to kill the Haitian president, triggering the worst crisis [que ce pays] experienced,” the leftist president told media in the Dominican Republic, where he is attending a summit.
Without advancing a date for a possible visit, Mr. Petro said that the Haitian people should solve the crisis in their country themselves “but they need democratic aid, not aid based on arms”.
Jovenel Moïse was shot and killed in July 2021 by a commando of Colombian mercenaries in his private residence in Port-au-Prince without his bodyguards intervening.
The United States detained eleven people, accused of planning the assassination from Miami, Florida. Among these suspects are Americans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Colombians.
At least seventeen former Colombian soldiers are also in a prison in Port-au-Prince in connection with this case.
The American investigation revealed that two men, at the head of a security company in Miami, had planned to sequester Jovenel Moïse to replace him with an American-Haitian.
The president’s death has added to the chaos in this small, impoverished Caribbean country, which was already in the grip of a serious economic, political and humanitarian crisis. It is in the hands of violent gangs, which have killed some 530 people and kidnapped nearly 300 since January, according to the UN.
Haiti was a cornerstone of the independence of Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia through its military support for Simon Bolivar in the 19th century.