Colombia says Haitian ex-official ordered assassination of Moise
Bogota, Jul 16 (EFE).- Authorities in Colombia said Friday that the Colombian nationals being held for the July 7 murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moise told investigators the order for the murder came from a former official of Haiti’s justice ministry.
“Joseph Felix Badio, who was a former Ministry of Justice official who worked on the anti-corruption commission with the General Intelligence Service, told Capador and Rivera that what they need to do is assassinate the president of Haiti,” Colombian police director Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas said in Bogota.
Duberney Capador, a former sergeant in Colombia’s army, died in a shootout with Haitian police following the murder, while retired Capt. German Rivera is among the 18 Colombians now in custody in Port-au-Prince in connection with the crime.
Haitian authorities say that 28 people took part in the attack on Moise’s private residence during the wee hours of July 7.
The assailants, who identified themselves to security guards as agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, shot the president and first lady Martine Moise.
Jovenel Moise died at the scene, while his widow remains hospitalized in Miami.
Vargas said that Capador took part in meetings between employees of Miami-based CTU Security Services and the Haitian-American accused of being behind the killing, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 62-year-old evangelical pastor and doctor living in South Florida.
Capador, German Rivera and two other people traveled to Haiti in late April on a contract to provide “security services” and were joined in June by an additional 20 people in June, the Colombian police director said.
In a meeting last month “with Joseph Felix Badio and a person called ‘Ascar,’ German Rivera and Duberney Capador were informed that they were going to arrest the president,” Vargas said.
The team then deployed to a house near Moise’s residence in the exclusive capital neighborhood of Pelerin 5 to undergo training in preparation for the mission.
It was not until three days before the assassination that Badio revealed to Capador and Rivera that the actual mission was to kill Moise, Vargas said.
But the general went on to reiterate Thursday’s statement from Colombia’s president, Ivan Duque, to the effect that the Colombians involved in the operation were participants in an assassination regardless of how much they knew about the intentions of the people who hired them.
Sanon, a complete unknown in Haitian politics, said in a YouTube video that he aspired to lead the country of his birth. But questions have arisen about where the pastor, who declared bankruptcy in the US, would have found the money to hire gunmen.
EFE ime/dr
