What do we know about the slaying of the president?

In the early hours of July 7, a group of gunmen wielding assault weapons entered Moïse’s private home in the hills of Port-au-Prince. Accounts suggest a chaotic scene. The Miami Herald and McClatchy newspapers reported that Moïse had placed a call to the head of Haiti’s national police at 1:34 a.m. calling for assistance. “They are shooting by the house,” Moïse told the Haitian National Police commissioner, according to the account. “Mobilize people.” In videos that circulated after the assassination, the assailants claimed the attack was a “DEA operation.” Some of the gunmen spoke Spanish, officials later said. Haiti is mostly French- and Creole-speaking. The president was fatally shot during the assault. The gunmen also seriously wounded his wife, Martine Moïse. She was airlifted to Florida for treatment. Though police teams eventually made it to the house, there are lingering questions about why the president’s regular guard units were not able to protect him and whether roadblocks set up near the house were circumvented. Presidential security chief Dimitri Hérard was removed from his position and placed under detention, police announced July 15. Moïse took office in 2017 after a challenging 14-month election process marred by violence and allegations of fraud. A first-time candidate, Moïse was known on the campaign trail as “Banana Man” for his past work as a successful banana exporter and entrepreneur. Moïse was born in Trou-du-Nord to a merchant and a seamstress. He graduated with a political science degree from the Université Quisqueya, married his classmate Martine Moïse and left the capital to work on developing rural areas. He ran for president as the candidate for the center-right Haitian Tet Kale Party. Martine Moïse returned to Haiti on Saturday ahead of her husband’s funeral, set for Friday.

Who carried out the killing and who ordered it?

Police killed at least three people in a gun battle after the assassination. More than 20 people have been arrested in the killing, including a Haitian man with long-standing ties to Florida, two Haitian Americans and several former Colombian soldiers. The two American citizens detained have been identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55. Haitian media reported that Solages and Vincent told judges investigating their case that they were interpreters for the attackers, hired to detain but not kill the president. Solages’s uncle, Schubert Dorisme, told The Washington Post that he was stunned to hear of the involvement of his nephew, who he said had no military training. Colombian President Iván Duque said some of the former soldiers from his country who had been arrested appeared genuinely to believe that they were in Haiti to serve as bodyguards. But among the soldiers was a “smaller group” that “apparently had detailed knowledge of what was to be a criminal operation,” Duque said during a radio interview. The Pentagon has confirmed that some of the former Colombian soldiers had previously received U.S. military training . Haitian officials pointed to a Haitian man, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 63, who they said had planned to assume the presidency. Haiti’s police chief, Léon Charles, told reporters that Sanon had landed in Haiti on a private plane in early June with “political objectives” and had recruited some members of the team who attacked Moïse through a Venezuelan security firm based in the United States. Sanon, who has reportedly lived in Florida off and on for two decades, has long advanced little-noticed claims to be the rightful leader of Haiti. Some Haitians have expressed doubt that Sanon, who filed for bankruptcy in Florida in 2013, could have arranged and funded a commando operation. A Washington Post investigation found that Sanon had held a meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in May that outlined an $83 billion plan to “save Haiti.” Some attendees of the meeting were shocked, however, that it could have led to violence.

What’s behind Haiti’s political chaos?

Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, has a painful history of foreign interventions, economic exploitation and dictatorial rule. Instability and violence have long dominated the country’s political landscape. The nation underwent about two centuries of Spanish colonial rule and more than a century of French rule, enduring brutal origins as a slave colony, before Haitians threw off their oppressors in an uprising that led to the country’s founding. In the 20th century and in recent decades, the country saw many rough periods, with high presidential turnover, coups, strongmen and U.S. interventions — including years of de facto U.S. rule after the United States invaded in 1915, in large part to protect its economic interests. In 2010, a catastrophic earthquake devastated the country. Haiti’s latest instability revolves around a dispute over Moïse’s presidency. He was elected in 2016 to a five-year term, but because of contentions over election results, he did not take office until the next year. Moïse insisted that entitled him to another year in power — a claim that Haiti’s opposition rejected. In February, when Moïse’s opponents say his term ended, they declared Supreme Court Judge Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis as interim president. Moïse called it a coup attempt, and 23 opponents were arrested. At the same time, communities have been terrorized by a surge in kidnappings, rapes and killings as rival gangs battle each other and the police for control of Haiti’s streets. The armed gangs that effectively control parts of the island have hazy allegiances, but human rights activists have accused Moïse’s government of having ties to some of them.

What role have political assassinations played in Haiti’s history?

The assassination of a Haitian president in July 1915 prompted U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to send thousands of Marines into Haiti to maintain order — although the United States didn’t leave until 1934. In 1957, dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier took over, declaring himself president for life and overseeing widespread human rights abuses and repression. After Duvalier’s death in 1971, his son, 19-year-old Jean-Claude Duvalier, took the reins until a popular revolt forced him into exile in France in 1986. The next few years were marked by coups and army rule until Haiti’s first free election in 1990. In March 2017, attackers fired at a motorcade transporting former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide from a Port-au-Prince courthouse.

Who leads the country now and what happens next?

The interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, was supposed to step down from his position after being dismissed by Moïse. Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon, was due to be appointed as the new prime minister, having been appointed by Moïse just two days before his death. But it was Joseph who announced Moïse’s death and said he was the head of Haiti’s government. And separately, Joseph Lambert, a lawmaker who had led Haiti’s dismantled Senate, also staked his claim to be leading Haiti. The uncertainty over who was leading Haiti complicated efforts to respond to the assassination. On Monday, Joseph told The Washington Post that he had agreed to step down. The decision came after major Western powers released a statement that offered their support for Henry, calling on him to form a “consensual and inclusive government.” During the crisis, Joseph had asked the United States and the United Nations to send troops to Haiti to help secure the country. The request was not accepted, though the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Colombian government are assisting with the investigation into Moïse’s killing. The United States had also donated hundreds of thousands of coronavirus vaccine doses to Haiti after the assassination. The country had been the only nation in the Americas with no vaccine doses before that. Some experts have warned that there may be a new refugee crisis from Haiti, with numbers of Haitians arriving at the border already sharply up even before Moïse’s killing. This report has been updated.

Americas

What to know about Haiti and the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse

By Miriam Berger

Sammy Westfall

and

Adam Taylor

July 19, 2021 at 1:49 p.m. EDT

Soldiers patrol in Petion Ville, the neighborhood where the late Haitian president Jovenel Moïse lived, in Port-au-Prince on July 7. (Joseph Odelyn/AP)

The assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse on July 7 — at the hands of armed gunmen who burst into his private residence — has raised the specter of further instability in the Caribbean country, already beset by a constitutional crisis and surging gang violence.

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Haiti has for decades struggled to shed its history of destabilizing dictatorships, foreign interventions and economic exploitation. In recent weeks, it has edged toward the brink of becoming a failed state, amid a spike in violence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, coupled with political and economic crises.

Even now, exactly who ordered the killing of Moïse remains unclear, and questions about who will lead the country are only just beginning to be resolved.

Here’s what to know about Moïse, his time as president and what his assassination could mean for Haiti.

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse assassinated overnight in his home by gunmen, says acting prime minister