Security companies, a month of work and stopover in the Dominican Republic: the route of the Colombian ex-military in the assassination in Haiti

The investigations into the assassination of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, make their way in a scenario still full of unknowns.

The authorities of the Caribbean country reported this Friday that at least 28 mercenaries participated in the assassination.

It involves 26 Colombians, several of them former Army officers retired as of 2018, and two Americans of Haitian origin.

Of them, 19 were arrested early in the morning —17 in the early hours and another two at the end of the day—, another eight managed to flee and at least three were killed by the security forces.

More information

• Lessons from Haiti

• Haiti detains 15 Colombians and two Americans for the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse

The Colombian police presented a table with the faces and names of 13 ex-military personnel and reported that they were recruited by four Colombian security companies, that they paid for their air tickets and that they traveled in two groups, in late May and early June.

According to the first reports, they had 32 days to plan the attack.

"Information is being expanded on the companies that recruited them," said the general director of the Colombian police, Jorge Luis Vargas, who assured that "all the verifications are already being carried out in Colombia to send a complete report to the Haitian authorities." .

"We offer all the collaboration to find the truth of the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse," added Colombian President Iván Duque, after communicating with the Prime Minister of Haiti, Claude Joseph.

The Colombian president also ordered that the police intelligence director travel to Haiti with members of Interpol Colombia to assist in the investigations.

The Colombian police assured that it is still pending to respond to new requests from the Haitian authorities.

The United States will also send a delegation, composed among others by members of the FBI, according to the White House.

Some of the Colombian citizens involved in the assassination of the President of Haiti Jovenel Möise.POLICÍA DE COLOMBIA

While the development of events continues in a nebula, the surprise call of a woman to a Colombian radio station provided some clues - impossible to contrast - about how the group was recruited for an operation of this magnitude, as well as about the profile of the ex-military. The woman, who identified herself as the wife of Francisco Eladio Uribe, one of the detainees, said that her husband had been hired by "a security agency to take care of families of sheikhs," that he did not know exactly where they would be assigned and They offered him $ 2,700 (about 2,300 euros) for the order.

"I spoke with him on Wednesday at 10 o'clock at night and he told me that it was their turn to stand guard, he was calm," said the woman.

The next day, she added, her husband wrote to her saying that he was fleeing, that they were attacking him and that "he did not understand what had happened."

Afterward, she had no further contact until she saw him on the news as one of those captured.

Trace in networks

Francisco Eladio Uribe was a professional soldier and left the Army in 2019, but he also had an investigation for extrajudicial executions or false positives, as the murders of civilians are known in Colombia to present them as guerrillas. The murder was committed in 2008 and Uribe had promised to provide information to the Colombian peace court about his participation. According to this version, this soldier was located by Sergeant Duberney Capador, one of those who was killed in the police operation.

The route they allegedly followed between Bogotá, the Dominican Republic and Haiti was confirmed by the Colombian police chief, who revealed that 11 ex-military personnel traveled on June 4 from Bogotá's El Dorado airport.

Another group did so on May 6.

"Duberney Capador and Alejandro Rivera García traveled from Bogotá to Panama and then to the Dominican Republic on May 6, they stayed for 4 days and on May 10, from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince by air," said Vargas.

The route traveled by these ex-military personnel was also recorded on the social networks of some of them.

Sergeant Manuel Antonio Grosso, one of the most trained of the group, who was a member of the Army's urban anti-terrorist special forces, released several tourist photos in the days before the assassination.

File presented by the Colombian Police showing some of the detainees. POLICE OF COLOMBIA

The data coincide with the information from the Haitian authorities.

"They entered in small groups, with the complicity of someone, they gave them residences in one of the most luxurious neighborhoods, the same one where the president lived,"

Mathias Pierre, minister in charge of Electoral Affairs from Haiti

, told

W Radio

in Colombia.

The details that are known to the dropper have also unleashed criticism of the Armed Forces whose deterioration has been marked by local corruption scandals and the murder of civilians and which escalated to the international level with the attack on the Haitian presidential couple.

In the midst of all the confusion about the details of the assassination, the country continues to be paralyzed by the power vacuum and with an apparent calm in the streets in the middle of a state of siege decreed by the prime minister.

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