(Miami) Four men accused of planning and financing the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse were arrested Tuesday morning in Florida, where they reside, US authorities said.
These new arrests bring to 11 the number of suspects incarcerated in the United States as part of this investigation, whose Haitian component is at a standstill.
Three of the suspects arrested on Tuesday were “seeking to profit” from a power shift in Haiti, Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s national security chief, said at a press conference in Miami.
Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, a 50-year-old Colombian, Antonio Intriago, a 59-year-old Venezuelan, and Walter Veintemilla, a 54-year-old Ecuadorian-American, were all owners of private security companies based in South Florida.
They thought they were getting “security and construction contracts from those who were supposed to take power after the fall of President Moïse,” Olsen said.
The fourth, Frederick Bergmann, a 64-year-old American, is suspected of having given them material support.
Jovenel Moïse, 53, was shot dead by an armed commando on the night of July 6 to 7, 2021 in his private residence in Port-au-Prince. His death had further aggravated the chaos in this poor little Caribbean.
The Haitian police quickly arrested around forty suspects, including around twenty Colombian mercenaries. The investigation then stumbled on the shortcomings of the local judicial system.
American justice, competent to judge the conspiracies hatched on its soil, took over.
According to the indictment, Mr. Ortiz and Intriago began talking in February 2021 with Christian Sanon, a Haitian-American “who wanted to become president of Haiti.” At the end of April, Mr. Veintemilla had joined their efforts. At the time, they wanted to stir up a riot to push President Moïse out the door.
Between April and June, they had recruited former Colombian soldiers and started discussing the purchase of weapons, again according to this document.
After realizing that Christian Sanon did not meet the legal criteria and lacked the popularity to become president of Haiti, they struck a new “contract” with a former Supreme Court justice, who also pledged to serve their interests once in power.
The plot had evolved into an assassination plot, with the local “support” of five other people, who were arrested and transferred to the United States over the past twelve months.
Two former Colombian soldiers are also being held in the United States.
Of the 11, nine are charged with “conspiracy to kill a person outside the United States” and face the death penalty. Christian Sanon and Frederick Bergmann are prosecuted for the illegal export of bulletproof vests to Haiti.