“We were framed and deceived”, say suspected of killing Haitian president

The smell of sewage and food waste permeates the air at the entrance to the National Penitentiary of Haiti, in the center of Port-au-Prince.

The origin is the exposed pipe through which visitors must pass while a liquid mixture flows into the street.
A head-to-toe hand search by the silent guards takes place and then a large metal door opens, revealing a courtyard on the far side.

In this exclusive report, the CNN he entered the prison in hopes of speaking with a certain group of inmates who had been kept silent by the government until now: some of the 26 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans who, according to investigators, entered the Haitian president’s room Jovenel Moïse in the early morning hours of 7 July and he was killed in a hail of gunfire.

Haitian authorities call these men murderers. They say they are innocent.

“We were idiots used for someone else,” one of the men told us. “But we don’t commit this crime.” Five months after that deadly night, the men are still detained, but they have not yet been formally charged.

A CNN she was allowed into the penitentiary after months of negotiation, with just paper and pen, and was instructed to wait in a wooden hut in the prison yard. Twenty minutes later, five Colombian men who clearly hadn’t been expecting our visit walked toward us wearing shorts, t-shirts, and dark blue sandals, looking thin and unhealthy.

In an exclusive interview, the five are the first and only suspects in the murder to speak publicly. They agreed to do so only if their identities were hidden, fearing for their own safety and that of their families.

And their message was consistent throughout an hour-long conversation in their native Spanish: they’re innocent, they’ve been tortured and they’ve been deceived.

afraid to speak

The five men said they arrived in Haiti in June, about a month before the assassination would turn their lives around and throw the country’s political landscape into chaos.

All are former Colombian soldiers, as they told CNN, and were hired as private security by a company called CTU.

With the promise of somewhere between $2,700 and $3,000 (between R$15.3 thousand and R$17,000) a month, they accepted the job. However, according to these same five men we spoke with and the wives of several others, they never received a penny.

CTU has not responded to CNN’s previous requests for comment and it is unclear whether the company still exists.
“They said we were going to secure a candidate for the presidency of Haiti,” said one of the men. “We had no idea what was going to happen.”

In Haiti, they were part of a group of more than two dozen Colombians who lived and worked together in a complex in the capital, Port-au-Prince, not far from where then-President Moise lived. At dawn on July 7, this group boarded a convoy that would travel along Pelerin Road to the presidential compound.

The president was shot dead shortly thereafter. His wife, First Lady Martine Moïse, was also seriously injured in the shooting.

CNN repeatedly asked the five prisoners for more details about the murder, including what actually happened, who was behind it, what their individual involvement specifically was, and what they did in the hours after the murder.

They insisted that they were not responsible for the president’s death, but refused to answer further questions or go into details about that fatal dawn for two common reasons: first, because none currently has a lawyer, and second, because they fear for their lives. .

“We are trapped in this prison. We have to stay here. I’m going to scream out everything I know when I can get out of here, but as long as we’re here, we’re afraid of reprisals,” said one.

“I’m afraid of what they can do to me, but also what they can do to my family [na Colômbia]”, pointed out another man. “They won.”

Sometime after Moise was murdered in the early morning hours, the five men interviewed by CNN left on the same train. Their vehicles were captured on video recorded by the cell phones of several residents in the area.

But they didn’t get very far until they were cornered by Haitian security forces. Forced out of their cars, they took shelter in an empty building nearby. Hours later, they fled through the back of the building and up a steep hill, entering the Taiwan embassy.

According to the Taiwan Foreign Ministry and a source with the Haitian security forces, the group of Colombians forced their way in, tying up two guards in the process. But Haitian police tracked them and they turned themselves in.

According to the prisoners, the beatings began as soon as they were detained.

One of the Colombians was stabbed several times by Haitian police, while several others were shot in the head, they said. Others were beaten, and one was attacked so brutally that his face was disfigured by the blows, they reported to CNN.

The men said that, before being transferred to the notorious National Penitentiary, they were held in an undisclosed location for more than three weeks. “They kept us elsewhere for 25 days, handcuffed in pairs. Our bathroom was the floor”, recalled one prisoner.

The men said the beatings were continuous and brutal and that they feared for the safety of their families at home in Colombia.

“Imagine how difficult it is when they show you a picture of your family on your cell phone,” said a man with tears in his eyes. “We had to do what they said.”

According to them, everyone was asked to sign their names on official statements they did not give and which were written in a language they could not read.

“I sat quietly, not saying a word, and the officer wrote my statement. He kept looking at me and writing more, though I didn’t say anything. They wrote and we kept quiet”.

According to this man, he signed a name on a document written in French, a language he could not understand.

All five men claimed they were forced to sign statements under duress.

“The real people responsible for this are outside the prison and we are imprisoned here. We were betrayed, incriminated and deceived”, declared one of them.

The Haitian National Police did not respond to a request for an interview from CNN. Asked about allegations of torture in police custody, a Haitian federal government spokesman said the government “has nothing to hide”, noting that CNN had “full permission to visit Colombians.”

The same spokesman denied that any official testimony was recorded without the Colombians knowing what was being written. “Based on reliable information, they were given translators to understand what to sign and what not to sign,” the spokesperson said.

little food, zero lawyer

The five men have been detained at the Haitian National Penitentiary for about three months. Conditions in the prison are visibly horrible, with several men crammed into a single cell. Sanitation seems to be something forgotten. Rats run through the area.

“Our lives are worthless here,” said one of the Colombian prisoners.

Men say they get a plate of rice a day, or sometimes corn. Each says he lost more than 13 pounds. Some are visibly losing their hair, leaving uneven gaps in their heads, a clear sign of malnutrition.

“It’s inhuman what’s happening to us here,” said one of the men in tears.

Haiti’s leading human rights organization, the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), also describes the general conditions in prison as inhumane. “The prison does not have enough food, gas to cook and adequate access to care, despite receiving more and more inmates over the past 12 months,” they wrote in a report released last month.

“We fully respect human rights,” said a Haitian federal government spokesman. “We have no grudge against Colombian prisoners.”

The government did not respond to questions about why the men had not yet been formally charged. However, more than five months after the murder, none of them have legal representation, a prerequisite for their statements to be heard by a judge. They say the Haitian court system only offered them junior lawyers they could not communicate with.

“They sent me a second semester lawyer [do curso] who didn’t speak Spanish. I’m not going to trust him with my life,” said one.

According to a person close to the case, the lawyers available to represent the men were not students but apprentices. Before becoming lawyers, law graduates must complete what is typically a two-year internship.

Although they are not fully qualified lawyers and have little experience, apprentices are commonly appointed to represent those who cannot afford a private lawyer, according to Brian Concannon, an expert with decades of experience in Haiti’s legal system.

“So they’re defending serious crimes cases when they’re not even allowed to appear in a simple contract case. [porque ainda não são advogados em exercício],” said Concannon. “They don’t have an investigation budget and usually don’t get paid.”

The men had hoped that the Colombian government would give them some legal assistance, but so far nothing has happened. The Haitian government also said that the responsibility now rests with Colombia. “We hope that Colombian government authorities will provide the prisoners with lawyers so they can be examined by the judge. [que supervisiona o caso]”, declared a spokesman for the Haitian government, adding that they cannot be officially interrogated without the presence of a legal defender.

The Colombian federal government in Bogotá did not respond to CNN’s request for comment, and the Colombian Embassy in Haiti forwarded our questions to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A public statement in late July said Colombian government officials had met with Colombian suspects with a lawyer present. However, the men we spoke to said that none of the Colombians in prison currently have legal representation.

To make matters worse, the men say they never received an explanation of the legal basis for their long detention.

“At no time anyone [no processo legal] he looked me in the face and explained why I’m here,” said one of the men. “We obviously know why we are here, but there is no rule of law or due process here. Everyone should be innocent until proven guilty and we are all entitled to legal representation.”

The prisoners ended the hour-long conversation with a message to the international community.
“Please seek the love within your hearts to understand our situation and give us the benefit of the doubt,” begged one man. “The best thing that could happen is for the case to be taken to an international court. When I’m out of this country, I’ll tell the world everything I know.”

*Translated text. Click here to read the original in English.