Relatives of those detained in Haiti protest in the Plaza Bolívar, in the capital of Colombia. Ivan Valencia / AP
The details of the participation of 18 Colombian soldiers in the assassination of the president of Haiti Jovenel Moïse, as well as their situation, remain in the dark. One month and ten days later, none of them have legal assistance, nor have the bodies of two men killed in a Haitian police operation been repatriated. "We are desperate, we have not had direct communication and we know that our relatives are in danger there, we ask for due process and that they give us an account of the bodies," Nataly Andrade, wife of Colonel Giovanni Torres, detained in Port-au-Prince, tells EL PAÍS.
The Government of Iván Duque has also expressed concern about the legal process of the detainees and has sent the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco Echeverri, to Haiti on Monday to meet with the island's authorities “and insist on legal assistance so that they can defend themselves. ”Said Foreign Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez. The Ombudsman's Office, which visited them at the beginning of August, also assured that although they have been questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Haitian police, the Colombians “have not been allowed to speak with a lawyer, nor have they been presented before a judicial authority ”.
The hope of the relatives, who have come together to protest in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, was a trip to the island that was put on hold by the earthquake.
"The delegation of relatives postponed their trip, for now, despite the fact that we got them permission to enter," said Ramírez while they assure that Colombia still had not got access to their relatives.
None of them are known to have been affected by the earthquake.
More information
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“So far we have only received one letter from the Ombudsman's Office and we were able to send them some clothes, two shirts, underwear and two pants,” says Andrade.
Like other relatives, she says that she spoke with her husband the day after Moïse's murder, while they were taking refuge in the Taiwanese embassy in Port-au-Prince.
“The last call was terrifying.
He said goodbye, told me that he loved me and that they were going to kill him.
Others of his colleagues asked me to fire them from their families ”, he says.
Torres survived but others such as former Sergeant Duberney Capador and First Sergeant Mauricio Romero fell in the operation and it is still unclear where their bodies are.
According to CNN, several of their sources say the bodies were moved.
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The Ombudsman's report also alerts about the health status of those captured whom it found with weight loss; Reddened wrists and scratches due to rubbing with the metal of the handcuffs, which have 24 hours. "One of them limped and another could not support himself and had to be helped by his partner," reads the document known to EL PAÍS. “They don't have antibiotics; several had stitches in their heads which, they said, were put on when they arrived and after more than 20 days they have not been removed. Likewise, three of them presented serious injuries that, due to their appearance, should be treated in a specialized medical establishment ”, the report indicates.
During that visit, managed by the Organization of American States (OAS), several of the ex-military men told Colombian officials that they were being subjected to torture. "The fear of losing your life or being tortured in a prison in Haiti is based on objective elements about the prison situation in that country," says the document signed by the ombudsman, Carlos Camargo. Following the report, which indicated that they were detained in a space without light, the ex-military were transferred to the Haitian national penitentiary and received medical attention. "They are in better health and are isolated from the rest of the prison population in a suitable place," said the Chancellor.
More than a month after the assassination, the investigation remains full of unknowns.
There are at least 26 detainees and ten fugitives, in a plot that involves several Latin American countries.
The most visible are the Colombian mercenaries, whose families insist they were deceived.
According to the Colombian police, at least two of them knew of the assassination and acted as recruiters, the rest apparently believed that they would provide security as bodyguards.
"Regardless of the level of knowledge that one had, what remains in evidence is that there is a participation of all that group in that assassination," said President Iván Duque.
Relatives of ex-military men accused of the assassination of the president of Haiti during a meeting with Colombian Foreign Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez.
The Colombians were recruited by the CTU Security company, at whose headquarters in Miami a key meeting was held to plan the murder. "We hope that the company will provide us with a lawyer to defend them," says Nataly Andrade, leader of the relatives of the ex-military. On the island, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a doctor who aspired to replace Moïse in power, several policemen and members of the presidential guard, was arrested and various figures from Haitian politics are wanted. One of them is Joseph Félix Badio, a former official of the Haitian Ministry of Justice, who according to the investigations was the one who gave the order to the ex-military to assassinate the president; the former Haitian senator
John Joël Joseph, who would have handed over his weapons to the mercenaries;
the DEA informant, Jaar Rodolphe (Dodof);
Haitian businessmen, Desir Gordon Phenil and Ashkard Peter Joseph;
as well as Supreme Court Justice Windelle Coq Thelot.
However, for many there is still a lack of clarity about the connections of the wanted and who paid for the murder.
"Only the oligarchs and the system could kill him,"
Martine Moïse, the president's wife and a survivor of the attack
, told
The New York Times
.
In the same interview, she assured that the Colombian mercenaries "did not go to play hide and seek" and that she wants to know who provided the resources and gave the order.
That of the ex-military, who still have no legal defense, is just one of the chapters in the judicial and political plot that surrounds Haiti.
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