Two men who may have dual Haitian and US nationality were arrested in connection with the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, a senior Haitian official reported Thursday.
One of them was allegedly a former bodyguard from the Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince, according to these sources.
Mathias Pierre, Haiti's Elections Minister, told various media outlets on Thursday, including The Associated Press news agency and The New York Times, that
a Haitian-American was among the six people who have been arrested
in the 36 hours that have passed since the brutal assassination of the Haitian president, shot at his residence in the capital on Wednesday morning.
The State Department indicated that it is aware of the reports that Haitian-Americans are in custody, but did not want to confirm the information or comment on it, according to NBC News.
A video shows the alleged command that assassinated the president of Haiti at his residence
July 7, 202102: 40
"We have the physical perpetrators [of the assassination] and we are looking for the intellectuals," Police Director General Léon Charles said Thursday morning in a televised statement together with Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph.
Witnesses said the two suspects
were discovered by a crowd Thursday while hiding in bushes in Port-au-Prince
.
Some people pulled the suspects by their shirts and pants, pushed and slapped them.
Police arrested the men, who were sweating profusely and wearing clothes that appeared to be stained with mud, according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the scene.
Officers put them in the back of a van and took them away as the crowd chased them to the nearest police station.
“They killed the president!
Give them to us.
We are going to burn them! ”Some shouted.
A crowd in Port-au-Prince asks the police to hand over two suspects who were arrested in connection with the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.
July 8, 2021.AP
Police in Haiti said Wednesday that four suspects were killed and two more arrested amid the chaos caused by the assassination.
Three policemen who had been taken hostage
by the suspects in the attack were released
at night, said Léon Charles, head of the Haitian National Police.
They did not give details of the attackers at that time, although reports say that in the video they are heard speaking in Spanish and English.
Most Haitians speak Creole or French.
Security forces investigate the home of the late Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, on July 7, 2021.
One of them even assured in English and with an American accent that they were DEA anti-narcotics agents carrying out an official operation.
However, senior Haitian government officials consulted by the Miami Herald newspaper assured that they were "mercenaries", not agents of another country.
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The Haitian president, who took office in February 2017,
was shot dead by an armed commando who broke into his home in a suburb of Port-au-Prince, the capital,
around 1:00 am (local time).
The first lady, Martine Moïse, who was in the house when the attack occurred, was injured and was transferred to Miami, Florida, on Wednesday afternoon to receive medical treatment at a hospital, the Haitian ambassador confirmed to NBC News in United States, Bocchit Edmond.
The assassination threatens to deepen the crisis in Haiti
, which suffers from gang violence, skyrocketing inflation and protests against the government, which was accused of diverting $ 2 billion in development aid funds from Venezuela.
Moïse had denied the allegations.
Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph assured that the police and the army are in control of security in Haiti, the poorest country in America.
Haitian President Jovenal Moise and First Lady Martine Moise in a Jan. 12, 2020 file photo. Reuters
Haiti planned to hold elections next year
, in which Moïse was not authorized to seek re-election.
The Government has now assured that the elections will be held in the coming months.
Since the deposition of the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986, better known as
Baby Doc
, the country has tried to maintain a democratic government.
However, this momentum has been hampered by a series of military coups, failed presidencies, and the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed around 300,000 Haitians and destroyed the economy.
A vehicle leaves the home of the late Haitian President Jovenel Moïse on July 7, 2021.
Malick Ghachem, a professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on Haitian politics, stated in an interview with NBC News that “the question to ask at this time of tragedy for the Moïse family is not whether Jovenel Moïse was a true statesman. or a would-be despot. "
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"Haiti has been trapped since the 2010 earthquake in an increasingly intense spiral of political instability, which deteriorated dramatically under the Martelly and Moïse governments," Ghachem explained in an email.
"The last time a Haitian president was assassinated was in 1915 and that triggered a US military occupation," he
wrote.
The United States and the international community should engage the country in a dialogue "that allows Haiti to come out of its current constitutional vacuum and gives it the opportunity to establish lasting democratic institutions, rather than just another round of elections just to have elections."
With information from NBC News and The Associated Press.