Michael Deibert interviewed by The Times (UK)

I was interviewed by The Times (UK) for an article on the recent New York Times investigation into the murder of Haiti president Jovenel Moïse. I stand by every word. The original article can be read here. 

Dossier of elite’s links to drug gangs ‘led to murder of Haitian president’

Jovenel Moïse’s killing by mercenaries may have been prompted by fears that he was about to name corrupt politicians

Stephen Gibbs, Caracas

Saturday December 18 2021, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times

 

Jovenel Moïse was assassinated and his wife Martine injured at their home by mercenaries who may have been searching for a handwritten dossier detailing links between Haiti’s elite and organised crime

 

Even by the grim standards of Haiti, it was a brazen, brutal crime. Last July, a group of mercenaries stormed a hilltop villa overlooking Port-au-Prince: the private residence of the president. With little resistance from the guards outside, they made their way inside the mansion seeking their target, the 53-year-old Jovenel Moïse. The softly spoken head of state was standing defenceless in his bedroom. His wife was lying on the floor. He was murdered with 12 shots to his abdomen.  Five months later, no one has been charged. But last week, a possible motive for the killing e     merged, following an investigation by The New York Times. The raid, it concluded, was not simply a murder mission. The hired hands, mostly Colombian ex-soldiers, had been instructed to find a dossier, handwritten by Moïse, which detailed links between Haiti’s ruling elite and organised crime.

In the preceding months, Moïse had set about compiling the report, which he told his inner circle would “name names”. Convinced his power was being deliberately stifled by his enemies and that his life was in danger, he planned to hand it over to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the newspaper claimed.

The theory fits in with previously unexplained details from the night of his murder. Officials who went into the villa immediately after the killing, where they discovered Moïse’s corpse, also said his office and bedroom had been ransacked, with documents strewn across the floor.

The president’s wife, Martine Moïse, who said she survived by “playing dead” after being shot in the elbow by the gunmen, has described how she heard the killers searching for something specific on the shelves where her husband kept his files. “That’s not it, that’s not it. Ah, that’s it,” were the words she recalled the men saying, in Spanish, as they rifled through Moïse’s papers. One man was apparently on the phone to someone who appeared to be directing the search. Once they had found what they were looking for, they fled.

The Haitian police have since arrested more than 40 suspects. Those being held include 18 former Colombian soldiers and several Haitian police officers.

But the investigation into who ordered and financed Moïse’s killing has stalled. Suspicions have been cast everywhere, including in the direction of the acting prime minister, Ariel Henry. Phone records indicate that he spoke to one suspect on the night of the killing. Henry, 72, has dismissed all suggestions of his involvement.

Prior to entering politics, Moïse himself reportedly had dubious business connections with at least two men who have been directly linked with drug trafficking. One, Charles Saint-Rémy, is the brother-in-law of Moïse’s predecessor, Michel Martelly, who served as president from 2011 to 2016. Moïse and Martelly, a musician-turned-politician based in Miami, were once close allies. The assumption in some circles was that as Martelly was constitutionally barred from running for two consecutive terms, Moïse would “keep the bench warm” before Martelly returned to office.

However, soon after Moïse was installed, relations between the two men began to strain. “Jovenel felt he was being suffocated by Martelly,” was how one Haitian businessman with government connections described the friction last week.

One senior official Moïse inherited from his predecessor was the head of the presidential security, Dimitri Hérard, who Moïse distrusted and thought was spying on him. In February the unpopular president became convinced that a coup was being plotted.

It was then that Moïse reportedly began compiling a dossier to expose the murkiest side of Haitian crime and politics. A handful of aides were asked to start listing every detail of the country’s smuggling networks. The information was collated by Moïse, a stickler for keeping handwritten notes. In the weeks before he died, Moïse ordered his security forces to close an illegal airstrip that was used for drug shipments, perhaps the decision that sealed his fate.

On the night of his murder, Moïse’s assassins were let in by his guards, who were under the command of Hérard. Moïse made several frantic phone calls to aides, including Hérard, seeking help. None arrived.

“He believed he would likely be killed before the end of his term,” said the American author Michael Deibert, who interviewed the president several times.

Deibert doubts a Haitian president would be killed to obtain a list of drug dealers. “Surely everyone already knows who they are?” he said.

“Hand-in-hand with the political and economic elite, Haiti is run by a criminal monarchy and it has been for many years,” he said. “They control an infernal system whereby if you are not willing to be corrupt that system will, at best, reject you. At worst, it will destroy you.”

The months since the murder have seen Haiti descend into total lawlessness. Local security experts say 20 people are being kidnapped each day. In October, 17 members of a missionary group — including a baby and four children — were taken hostage after visiting an orphanage. Their abductors had demanded a $1 million ransom for each of them. All were eventually released, the final 12 were set free on Thursday. The assumption is that a ransom was paid.

Since the assassination, President Joe Biden has released an extra $50 million of support for police training. Washington is in talks with France and Canada over the possibility of helping Haiti set up an elite force to tackle the gangs. The international community has given about $13 billion of aid to Haiti in the past decade.

Deibert is pessimistic the criminality can be tackled if the murder of the head of state remains unsolved. “No Haitian in any position of power seems interested in finding out who killed the president,” he said. “That, in itself, is telling.”