The Federal Government arrested in Miami four men accused of organizing the attack that led to the death to Haitian President Jovenal Moïse on July 7, 2021. Since then the impoverished Caribbean country has experienced social and political turmoil.
The four arrested had already been related to the assassination. Two are connected to a security company based in the city of Doral, in the Miami metropolitan area, and allegedly organized the recruitment of a group of former Colombian soldiers and police officers who carried out the action.
They are Venezuelan-American Antonio Intriago, owner of the Counter Terrorist Unit Security (CTU) company; Colombian-American Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, operator of the CTU Federal Academy LLC affiliate; and the Americans Walter Veintemilla, director of the Worldwide Capital Lending Group, based in Miramar, north of Miami, in charge of supporting a conspiracy to kidnap or kill the president of Haiti. The fourth defendant is Frederick Bergmann, the financial arm of the operation.
Bergmann is also accused of conspiring to smuggle bulletproof vests to the Colombian mercenaries who allegedly staged the fatal shooting of Moïse and seriously wounded his wife Martine.
He is also accused of failing to present valid export documents when the 20 body armor was contraband shipped on June 10, 2021 from Miami to Port-au-Prince. The shipment was officially referred to as “X-ray medical vests and school supplies.”
In a press conference on Tuesday, broadcast by various local channels, the two prosecutors in the case insisted that the attack was fabricated in the United States, specifically in Miami. And that it was oriented to “put an end to the legitimate government of Haiti.”
According to prosecutor Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s Homeland Security Division, “parts of this plot advanced within the United States, framed as a human tragedy and an assault on fundamental democratic principles.”
His colleague Markenzy Lapointe, US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said the initial plan was conceived by Ortiz and Intriago with the idea of ”encouraging civil unrest.”
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According to the FBI, Intriago, Ortiz and Veintemilla played different roles in a plan that began with the idea of arresting and kidnapping President Moïse upon his return from a state visit to Turkey, in June 2021. But in the final plan, introduced the idea of assassinating him. All of this was planned in meetings at the Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports to discuss the financing, logistics and security of the plan.
The idea was also to replace him with a 64-year-old Haitian-American pastor, Christian Emmanuel Sanón, a physician who has not been arrested.
Of Ecuadorian origin, Veintemilla raised $172,000 from investors to make a private loan to Sanon in his quest to become Haiti’s next president. The financier would be repaid with future Haitian assets in a “peaceful transition of power,” Veintemilla’s lawyer recently told the Miami Herald.
The president received twelve bullet wounds during the attack, according to the forensic report. His wife was also shot, but she survived when she was transferred to the United States for her treatment.
Judge Carl Henry Destin told the newspaper Le Nouvelliste that Moïse’s corpse had twelve holes made with large-caliber weapons and also 9-millimeter ones.
“We found him lying on his back, blue pants, white shirt stained with blood, mouth open, left eye pierced. We saw a bullet hole in the forehead, one in each nipple, three in the hip, and one in the abdomen,” he recounted.
