PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The United States rebuffed Haiti’s request for troops to help secure key infrastructure after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse by suspected foreign mercenaries, even as it pledged to help with the investigation.
The killing of Moïse by a squad of gunmen in the early hours of Wednesday morning at his home in Port-au-Prince pitched Haiti deeper into a political crisis which may worsen growing hunger, gang violence and a Covid-19 outbreak.
Haitian Elections Minister Mathias Pierre said a request for US security assistance was raised in a conversation between interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday. Haiti also made a request for forces to the United Nations Security Council, Pierre said.
But a senior US administration official said there were “no plans to provide US military assistance at this time.”
A letter from Joseph’s office to the US embassy in Haiti, dated Wednesday and reviewed by Reuters, requested the dispatch of troops to support the national police in reestablishing security and protecting key infrastructure across the country following Moise’s assassination.
A similar letter, also dated Wednesday and seen by Reuters, was sent to the UN office in Haiti.
“We were in a situation where we believed that infrastructure of the country – the port, airport and energy infrastructure – might be a target,” Pierre told reporters.
Another aim of the request for security reinforcements would be to make it possible to go ahead with scheduled presidential and legislative elections on Sept. 26, Pierre said.
The UN political mission in Haiti received the letter and it was being examined, said Jose Luis Diaz, spokesman for the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.
“The dispatch of troops under any circumstances would be a matter for the (15-member) Security Council to decide,” he said.
The United States and Colombia said they would send law enforcement and intelligence officials to assist Haiti after a number of their nationals were arrested for Moise’s murder.
Police in Haiti said the assassination was carried out by a commando unit of 26 Colombian and two Haitian-American mercenaries. The two Haitian-Americans were identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, both from Florida.
Seventeen of the men were captured – including Solages and Vincent – after a gun battle with Haitian authorities in Petionville, the hillside suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince where Moise resided.
Three others were killed and eight remain at large, according to Haitian police. Authorities are hunting for the masterminds of the operation, they said.
A judge investigating the case told Reuters that Moise was found lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. The front door of the residence had been forced open, while other rooms were ransacked.
“His body was riddled with bullets,” Petionville tribunal judge Carl Henry Destin said. “There was a lot of blood around the corpse and on the staircase.”
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