Haiti: Ex-senator gets life sentence for his role in president's assassination

Haiti: Ex-senator gets life sentence for his role in president's assassination

Former Haitian senator Joseph Joel John, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 7 July 2021 assassination of Haiti's then president Jovenel Moïse.

The ex-senator, sentenced on Tuesday, had pleaded guilty in a US federal court to co-organising the kidnapping of Moïse, which subsequently escalated into an assassination,

According to court documents  viewed by French news agency AFP, John (52) admitted to providing vehicles and repeatedly meeting with other co-conspirators in Haiti and Florida with the aim of assassinating President Moïse, as outlined in his plea deal agreement with the prosecutor.

The case fell within the jurisdiction of the US court since the conspiracy was planned partly in Florida, a southeastern US state home to a substantial Haitian diaspora.

The former senator is the third person charged in the US for the assassination. In June, Haitian-Chilean businessman Rodolphe Jaar was given a life sentence for supplying weapons to the mercenaries who murdered the former Haitian president. Then, in September, retired Colombian military officer German Rivera confessed to assisting the killers.

The then Haitian president was shot dead in his residence near the capital, Port-au-Prince, by a squad of over 20 trained individuals, mostly from Colombia. His bodyguards did not intervene. Originally intended as a kidnapping, the operation quickly escalated into an assassination, court documents confirmed.

A US investigation revealed that two men leading Miami’s CTU security company had planned to abduct Moïse and replace him with Christian Sanon, a Haitian-American aiming to become the country’s president.

In exchange for kidnapping the president, the two were promised lucrative infrastructure projects and contracts for the supply of military equipment and security forces to Sanon’s future government, according to the prosecution.


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