Haiti President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated two years ago. Here’s what is known so far

Two years into the investigation of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, there is still no smoking gun — only questions.

However, details have emerged from the questioning of suspects in both Haiti, where the case is being presided over by its fifth investigative judge, and in the United States, where there are 11 suspects in custody, most of them facing life in prison on federal conspiracy charges. A trial date is tentatively set for May 6, 2024.

One suspect has already taken a plea: Haitian-Chilean businessman Rodolphe Jarr. He pleaded guilty to providing money and housing in the conspiracy to kidnap and kill Moïse and has been sentenced to life in prison. Colombian commandos and two of the three Haitian Americans accused in the plot launched their attack on the night of the assassination from a home in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

Last month, federal prosecutors filed additional charges in the conspiracy case, accusing three suspects, Christian Emmanuel Sanon; Antonio Intriago, the head of the Counter Terrorist Unit Security firm, and Frederick Bergmann Jr., of conspiracy to carry out “a military expedition” from the U.S. against Haiti. Intriago was also charged with conspiring with Sanon and Bergmann, to illegally import bullet-proof vests into Haiti for the assassination plot.

Here are a few of the developments that have come to light:

▪ There was no forced entry into the president’s residence. When FBI agents visited Haiti in April to continue with their inquiry, they returned to house, which remains under police guard. Agents found that all of the doors had been unlocked and there were no bullet holes, something that Haitian police also noticed. Also, there was an exit door on the first floor in the garage that the president could have used to escape, raising questions about why Moïse, who frantically called for help after hearing shots, didn’t try to escape. He was found dead in his bedroom, shot a dozen times.

▪ While Moïse was killed inside the private hillside residence he was renting in the Pèlerin 5 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, kidnapping and killing him wasn’t the original plan. The plot, which also included a botched plan to grab him at the airport when he returned from an overseas trip to Turkey on the weekend of June 19, 2021, initially focused on his offices on the grounds of the presidential palace. The U.S. criminal complaint said that as far back as April 27, 2021 there had been a plot to oust Moïse while he was at work. One of the jailed U.S. suspects had texted a photo of a whiteboard with a drawing of the assault plan for the building.

▪ In the days after Moïse’s death, several Haitians told the Miami Herald a previous group of Colombians had been in the country working with police on anti-gang operations. That was not entirely true. There was a group of foreign security specialists in Haiti, but they were not Colombians, they were Americans, former Haiti Police Director Léon Charles said. Prior to the assassination, Charles said, he too heard rumors that foreigners “were operating in the country, getting ready to do something.... We thought they were talking about the same people we had in the country on the invitation of the president.”

▪ In early April 2021, John Joël Joseph, who is also known as Joseph Joël John, traveled to South Florida from Haiti to meet with accused co-conspirators Christian Emmanuel Sanon, James Solages, Walter Veintemilla and business partners Antonio Intriago and Arcángel Pretel Ortiz. Intriago and Pretel operated two Doral-area security firms that were involved in the recruitment and hiring of the 22 Colombians accused in the assassination; three of them were killed in the immediate aftermath.

Sanon, a Haitian-American pastor and physician with political aspirations who wanted to replace Moïse, signed an agreement with Intriago’s Counter Terrorist Unit Security to provide him with, among other things, ballistic vests “for his ‘private military’ force in Haiti.” Five days later Sanon and Intriago transported a small number of the vests aboard a private flight from Florida to Haiti.

▪ In early June 2021, Veintemilla paid $9,145 for 18 Colombian nationals with military training to travel to Haiti. The following day, he wired $15,000 to Solages to buy ammunition.

▪ On June 8, 2021, Intriago and Bergmann discussed shipping bulletproof vests to Haiti disguised as “X-ray protective vests.” Two days later, along with Sanon, they exported the vests from Florida to Haiti, claiming they were medical X-ray vests with a value of approximately $1,000.

None of the new information, however, sheds light on a possible mastermind of Moïse’s assassination — or the motive for killing him. Nor does it offer any clues about why Haiti’s president didn’t take any precautions even though he had suspicions of a possible coup.