Did Drug Cartels Murder Haiti's President? | The War on Drugs

Gunshots rang out in Port-au-Prince after the

president

's assassination. Then, just 36 hours after a group of more than two dozen Colombians and two Haitian-Americans allegedly killed the

president

, most would be detained or declared dead. On July 7, 2021, the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated. Armed men broke into his house and machine-gunned Moïse in his bedroom, killing him and seriously injuring his wife. Typically, when a sitting head of state is assassinated, it is an act of terrorism or war. But evidence has emerged that may show that Moïse was killed because he was launching an investigation into high-profile Haitian

drug

traffickers with political connections.

This is how

drug

cartels

may have killed Haiti's president. Immediately after the shooting, a fierce fight broke out between police and the killers on the streets of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Eventually, Haitian police arrested 18 Colombian mercenaries, along with two Haitian-Americans. Three other Colombians were

murder

ed and five are believed to remain at large. What does it say about a country that the president is killed in his own home? We are doing the best we can, but it is not easy for us. This is not the army. With that kind of battle they're having here, I think it's something that could be controlled by an army.

At the time, many people assumed it was simply a political assassination. However, it later emerged that Moïse was compiling a list of Haitian drug traffickers and was reportedly about to hand the list over to US authorities. The Colombian mercenaries have apparently admitted that recovering this list was a top priority. And Moïse's widow, Martine, the only surviving witness to the

murder

, has released interviews that apparently support this claim. Face down and bleeding, she thinks about a dozen men who ransacked the room looking for something specific. They came looking for something because I heard them say, “That's not it.

Thats not all. There it is." Which means they found what they were looking for. Even more confusing in all of this is that some of the alleged drug traffickers on Moïse's list were the same people who put him in power in the first place: the people who actually govern Haiti. Moïse's predecessor as president was Michel Martelly, a popular singer who took advantage of his celebrity status to win the presidency in 2011. It was Martelly who chose Moïse as his successor Under the Constitution, Haitian presidents cannot run for office. They can run again. They only have to resign for five years.

Basically, Moïse was going to be in charge of warming up the bench. Generally speaking, everything seemed to be going according to plan until early 2021, when the rumors of an alleged coup. of state caused Moïse to drastically change policy. There are at least one, possibly three, landing strips there. In the period from May to June, several thousand kilos of cocaine landed on that landing strip. They had never seen anything like this before. These planes came from Colombia and Venezuela and they thought Moïse was involved. Moïse was furious, he started calling everyone and started trying to close this landing strip.

The problem was that some of these drug trafficking operations were supposedly run by powerful people very close to Martelly. This is Charles 'Kiko' Saint-Rémy. He is a Haitian businessman with interests in everything from hotels to eel fishing. He has openly admitted to dealing

drugs

in the past, but insists that his current dealings are legitimate. However, in international law enforcement, Kiko is assumed to remain a major player in the Haitian drug trade and was reportedly one of the key names on Jovenel Moïse's list. He is also the brother-in-law of former President Michel Martelly. Drug dealers, people involved in the drug business, are ruthless killers.

Since they don't play, many people are very afraid of Kiko Saint-Rémy. And they couldn't challenge him because, after all, his brother-in-law was the president. What is perhaps most suspicious about the July murder is that Moïse's own security team did not fire a single shot. They withdrew and let the murderers pass. Why do you think that watchtower was unmanned? It was like a routine, so sometimes they have people and sometimes they don't. It's just luck that that night... seems a little strange, right? Well I do not know. I don't know. This is Dimitri Hérard, who was head of President Moïse's security team.

Dimitri Hérard is one of the police chiefs who heads the security of the presidential palace. Moïse never trusted him. Moïse constantly said: “These people are traitors. "I don't want to talk to them." And these are the people who are in charge of the president's security, right? The forces stepped aside, the assassination unfolded, and Dimitri basically didn't lift a finger to save the president. He used to work for President Martelly and it is said that he spied on Moïse directly for Kiko. But Hérard, the head of the president's security team, is also a leading suspect in one of the largest drug trafficking cases in Haiti's history.

He was reported to have used police vehicles to transport large quantities of cocaine and heroin in a case that also involved Kiko. Hérard has now been detained by authorities, and Colombian police reported that he visited the country several times over the past year, raising suspicions that he recruited mercenary squads. But the case becomes even murkier. It has since emerged that at least one of the Haitian-American suspects detained after the murder was a former DEA informant, and video has emerged showing that the gunmen actually gained access to his home by claiming to be from the DEA themselves. .

At least two of the main suspects in the murder were former DEA informants, drug traffickers turned informants by the DEA, and these are people who killed the president of Haiti. The war on

drugs

has basically led US foreign policy for several decades and the DEA does not feel the need to answer any questions. Drug-related corruption is so endemic in Haiti that it has even extended to the DEA's own mission there. Whistleblowers have alleged that millions of dollars have been embezzled and that DEA agents were even tipping off Haitian traffickers, including Kiko. In 2021, the United States Office of Special Counsel issued a formal reprimand to the agency over the situation in Haiti.

They certainly are not going to give their lives on the battlements for some reason. There is no cause for them. Its cause has always been greed and violence. High-level drug-related corruption is nothing new in Haiti. The country lies almost exactly halfway between South America and Florida, and its poverty, unstable politics, and lack of rule of law make it an ideal hub for drug trafficking. The trade exploded in the 1980s with the cocaine boom in the United States, and the Haitian elite became involved almost immediately. The most recent estimates indicate that 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United States will do so through Haiti or the Dominican Republic, which share an island.

Since the 1990s, the drug business in Haiti has become the number one business. Many politicians who were elected to parliament and became ministers are involved somewhere, in some way, with drug trafficking. As is often the case with the war on drugs, this is a complex case, and we cannot pretend that Jovenel Moïse himself was some kind of super-clean anti-corruption warrior against the drug

cartels

. Indeed, Moïse was widely accused of maintaining control through ties to violent Haitian street gangs, in particular the G9 and its leader, Jimmy 'Barbecue' Chérizier. Chérizier is a former police officer who left the police force to become a kind of street godfather, unifying nine of Haiti's largest criminal gangs under his control as the G9.

It is also alleged that he was strongly allied with the Moïse government and received weapons and police protection in exchange for attacking areas that voted against the government. Do you consider the G9... and yourself to be a legitimate authority here in Haiti? We know that we are a sociopolitical structure and force that fights on behalf of the vulnerable. A socio-political movement that carries some pretty big guns? But for all of Chérizier's stance as a defender of the poor, he is accused of carrying out brutal massacres, often on behalf of the Moïse regime. They enter houses and take people to burn them alive.

This is my son. There was a lot of gunshots, so I ran and took him inside. They came in and took him away. Last Saturday he passed away. Who do you blame for your son's death? Barbecue and fire spitters. Do you think President Moïse has any connection to the increase in violence here? Yes. This man is just a former police officer. I told them that he is close to the president, his guard. He also has a badge from the president's office. He has many sponsors. He is in the game. And he now he's killing people in large numbers.

Jovenel is aware of everything he does. He didn't tell her anything. He never tried to catch him and stop him. But we will do to him what he has done to us. The first thing he talks about is that corruption, but he was very poor. He was involved in money laundering. He was using state resources to build his own private wealth. And he tried to dispossess the ruling elite by transferring their assets for his own good. President Moïse's assassination has not yet been solved and he may never be. Following the assassination, several different factions claimed power, creating a violent political vacuum.

And Jimmy 'Barbecue' Chérizier, leader of the G9 gang, launched an open war to consolidate his own control over his territory. Many police officers, men in power and members of the opposition conspired with the corrupt elite to assassinate the president. The people will take to the streets to defend our rights and we will practice self-defense with legitimate violence. We repeat: if they shoot at us, we know what to do. Meanwhile, despite all the corruption that the drug war has caused in Haiti, including the possible assassination of a president, the cocaine will continue to flow and enrich the people who may have murdered it beyond what any ordinary Haitian can afford. current can dream.

There are people living on the streets, not just animals. If the government can't do its job, we will police our neighborhood. We will do our job. We would like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.