Haiti: New judge appointed to investigate assassination of president

The Dean of the Court of First Instance of Port-au-Prince, Bernard Saint-Vil, has appointed Justice Gary Orélie as the new investigating magistrate to probe the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, 2 weeks after Mathieu Chanlatte stepped down.

Chanlatte had stepped down claiming “personal reasons” that observers said included fears for his personal safety.

Moïse was shot and killed at his private residence overlooking the capital on July 7, when armed gunmen stormed the residence. His wife, Martine, was seriously injured and had to be flown to the United States for medical treatment.

Justice Minister Rockefeller Vincent has said that all necessary means will be made available to Judge Orélien in the context of this case so that he can carry out the investigation.

In a letter sent early last week, to Léon Charles, Director General of the National Police of Haiti, Vincent said, “I hasten to urge you to pass the firm and necessary instructions to the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) so that all the logistical, financial and coercive means available to the National Police of Haiti are strongly mobilised for lead to the execution of the warrants issued by the Government Commissioner against all those who have an implication in the assassination of His Excellency President Jovenel Moïse.

“Furthermore, I would like to draw your attention to the need to set up a special security system in the cells housing Colombians and other people concerned by this affair and detained in the civil prison of Port-au-Prince.

“This approach contributes to the idea of minimizing all the risks incurred by the latter with the intention of reducing them to silence. I am waiting, Mr. Director General that the maximum permanence is decreed and maintained on this file on which the future of democracy and the Nation depends on it,” Vincent wrote.

He said also that he wanted to remind Charles that it is “obligatory for the National Police of Haiti to accompany and comply with all the requisitions of the investigating magistrate who will be appointed to investigate in depth this villainous act which will continue to shock the national conscience.”

Police have arrested more than 40 suspects, including 18 former Colombian soldiers and 20 Haitian police officers, but there is no clarity about who was behind the plot to kill Moïse, who had been ruling Haiti by decree over the past year.

Haiti has called on the United Nations to conduct an international investigation into the murder along with a special court to prosecute the suspects. – (CMC)