Crime & Justice

Ex-senator of Haiti arrested over President Moise’s assassination

San Juan, Jan 15 (EFE).- Jamaican authorities have arrested former Haitian opposition senator John Joel Joseph, a suspect in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July last year.

The Jamaica Observer newspaper said the former senator lived incognito in a rural Jamaica community with three other Haitian nationals.

Police said they might have lived on the island since December after arriving by boat.

Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated on July 7, 2021, when armed men stormed the presidential palace and shot him dead. His wife survived with injuries.

The arrest of the suspect came days after Haiti’s leading human rights organization, the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), denounced earlier this month the lack of progress in the investigation of the assassination.

Since foreign citizens allegedly participated in the preparation and execution of the murder plan, the RNDDH said it was important to collaborate with the intelligence agencies of other countries to help locate the plotters of the assassination.

The United States authorities have arrested a Colombian national, Mario Antonio Palacios, for his alleged involvement in the murder.

Palacios, 43, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the US and providing material support resulting in death.

Palacios was recently deported from Jamaica and arrested during a layover in Panama, where he agreed to travel to the US.

Palacios and others, including 20 Colombian citizens and a group of Haiti-based dual Haitian-American citizens, participated in a plot to kidnap the Haitian president and take him on a plane.

But on July 6, he was told that the plan had changed to the assassination. EFE

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