The director general of the Haitian National Police, Léon Charles, speaks at a press conference in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) on Sunday, July 11, to announce the arrest of the alleged mastermind behind the assassination of the president.Orlando Barría / EFE
The Haitian authorities announced this Sunday the arrest of one of the alleged intellectual authors of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
This is Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old doctor who has lived in Florida for more than two decades.
The Haitian police chief hinted that Sanon was plotting to become president and said that, among other evidence, when the police intercepted several members of the command "the first person they called was Emmanuel Sanon."
This was revealed by the director general of the Haitian National Police, Léon Charles, at a press conference in Port-au-Prince.
According to the police, there are two other intellectual authors involved, but their identities were not released.
During a search of his home, police found a DEA cap, a box of cartridges, 20 boxes of bullets, 24 unused shooting targets, and four Dominican Republic license plates.
According to the reconstruction carried out by the police, Sanon arrived in Haiti a month ago by private plane from Florida accompanied by a group of six Colombians originally hired to act as bodyguards, "But then they received a new order: arrest the president," said the Police chief. "That's where the new operation began," which was later joined by another 22 people, he said.
"Sanon arrived by private plane in June for political purposes and contacted a private security company to recruit the people who committed this act," detailed Charles. The company hired, he said, was a US-based Venezuelan security company called CTU. Precisely, in reference to this company, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said this Saturday that the company is owned by Antonino Intriago, a Venezuelan linked to the opposition, "a personal friend of Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López."
Now, the objective of the police, who work with Colombian officials and seven FBI agents who have arrived in the country, is to find out who financed the operation, who paid the tickets for the second group or who paid their salaries, which were around $ 2,700 per person. The two arrested Haitian Americans confessed to the judge that they were not in the president's room when he was assassinated and that they had been hired only to act as translators for the command. According to them, the objective was not to kill the president, but to kidnap him to take him to the national palace, revealed the Haitian judge who interviewed them.
The alleged intellectual organizer is known to have lived in Florida for the past 20 years and declared bankruptcy in 2013. In a video posted on YouTube in 2011 titled "Leadership for Haiti", when Moïse was not even an active politician , introduces himself as a doctor and describes the country's leaders as corrupt and accuses them of depriving the country of its resources, saying that "they don't care about the people." In the video he is running for president and defends that the Caribbean country has natural resources such as uranium and oil that have been seized by the political class. “With me in power, you're going to have to tell me: 'What are you doing with my uranium? What do you do with the oil we have in the country? ', He says in the video. And he insists: "We need a new leadership that changes the way of life."His Twitter account has been inactive since 2011 and at the time of his capture he had 67 followers and was not following anyone.
Regarding the balance of the hunt and capture operation undertaken in Haiti since the July 7 murder, the police confirmed that 26 Colombians are suspected of the murder, 18 have been arrested, three have died and another five are still at large. "They are dangerous individuals," he said. "I'm talking about command, specialized command."