Former first lady Martine Moïse, widow of slain Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and his children, Jomarlie and Jovenel Moïse Jr. have filed a lawsuit in a Miami-Dade County court, seeking a trial and unspecified damages against several suspects charged in the killing of her husband.
The family is seeking to hold defendants “responsible for their heinous acts that resulted in President Moïse’s assassination and that injured” his wife. President Moïse was shot a dozen times inside his private bedroom on July 7, 2021, and his wife was seriously injured.
- Advertisement -
More than 40 individuals have been accused in the plot, in which 18 Colombian commandos are accused of storming the president’s residence along with Haitian police officers and two Haitian-Americans posing as translators. There are currently 11 suspects in custody in the United States, with the exception of two, Walter Veintemilla, head of Miramar-based Worldwide Capital Lending Group and Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman who recently pleaded guilty in the case.
The civil lawsuit names all 11 suspects currently charged in the U.S. criminal case as well entities controlled by some of them, such as Counter Terrorist Unit Security.
The lawsuit states that “several masterminds and accomplices recruited, financed, trained, and housed a team of mercenaries; provided them with weapons, transportation, and other equipment; and orchestrated a plot to kidnap or murder the President of Haiti.” “The mercenaries carried out this plan in the middle of the night by deceiving and restraining the heavily guarded home where President Moïse., First Lady Moïse., and their family were resting,” the lawsuit says.
“The implausible goal of the co-conspirators, after the assassination of President Moïse in cold blood, was to install their own kangaroo government that would then summarily pardon the assassins.”
Attorney Paul Turner said while the United States can only bring charges against and arrest individuals it has jurisdiction over, “we believe that there are other people involved outside of the United case that the U.S. doesn’t have jurisdiction over,” and the family wants this exposed to the public.
“We do not want to take any action that could jeopardize the criminal proceedings here in the U.S. And if [Martine] Moïse was to go be interviewed, go give statements or whatever, it is possible that those could be used against her somehow in the U.S. government’s case,” Turner said. “I’ve requested that she refrain from providing any interviews or information to any sources outside the U.S. government.”
While the case is moving in the US, the opposite is happening in Haiti, where four prosecutors selected to preside over the case were dismissed.
