Miami Jury Convicts Four in Haiti President Assassination Plot

Justice After Five Years

A federal jury in Miami delivered a sweeping verdict Friday, convicting four South Florida men of conspiring to assassinate Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. The verdict came nearly five years after the assassination, following 39 days of testimony over almost nine weeks , bringing accountability to a plot that plunged the Caribbean country deeper into political turmoil and gang-fueled chaos .

Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, Antonio Intriago, Walter Veintemilla and James Solages were found guilty of conspiring to kill or kidnap Haiti's elected leader and providing material support for the plot . The jury found the four defendants guilty of five counts, including a conspiracy to provide material support, a terrorism-related charge and conspiracy to lead a military expedition against a friendly nation . All four defendants could be sentenced to as long as life in prison .

The case exposed how South Florida became a staging ground for a deadly foreign plot . Prosecutors argued that the South Florida group, in collaboration with a few key Haitians starting in April 2021, wanted to replace Moïse with a new president willing to hire them for lucrative security and infrastructure contracts in Haiti .

The Fatal Night

Martine Moïse was the first witness at trial, describing through a Creole interpreter how she awoke to the sounds of gunfire after midnight. She told jurors that she turned to her husband in bed next to her to ask what was going on. "Honey, we are dead," Jovenel Moïse replied, according to his wife's testimony .

On July 7, 2021, dozens of Colombian commandos stormed his house on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Moïse, 53, was shot in his bedroom as his wife, who was wounded, watched . The first lady reported hearing the assailants speaking Spanish and searching the bedroom for a mysterious document .

The assassination involved a complex web of conspirators. Intriago also faced four additional counts related to shipping bulletproof vests to Haiti for about 20 former Colombian soldiers whom CTU recruited and sent to Port-au-Prince roughly a month before the killing . Solages served as the defendants' primary liaison in Haiti and repeatedly traveled between South Florida and Haiti to coordinate with Haitian gang leaders, obtain weapons and ammunition in Haiti, and conduct surveillance of President Moïse's residence .

Competing Narratives

Defense attorneys argued at trial that the investigation into the assassination was a mess and that the four were manipulated into taking blame for an internal coup. They said the men believed they had a legitimate warrant signed by a Haitian judge and that they were liberating Haiti from Moïse, who had overstayed his term as president .

A medical expert for the defense testified that two bullets retrieved from the president's body did not match his injuries. Defense lawyers theorized they had been planted as part of a parallel Haitian conspiracy to frame the Colombians and the security firm .

However, evidence presented in the mountains of text messages, financial transfers and other evidence linking the men to the operation appeared to be too much for the jury to ignore . "This case is very simple," lead Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean McLaughlin told jurors during closing arguments. "This is a case about greed, arrogance and power" .

Unfinished Business

While the convictions provide some closure, significant questions remain unanswered. "I don't think the trial was meant to tell us who ordered the assassination," said Joverlein Moïse, the oldest son of the assassinated president. "Those four people were not the head of this thing; everybody knows that. A lot of people wanted my father dead" .

A fifth defendant, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haiti-born doctor and pastor who lived in South Florida, will be tried at a later date due to health issues. Initially, the South Florida plotters backed Sanon, 67, to succeed Moïse, 53, after his removal, but they abandoned him for another political candidate .

The assassination's aftermath has been devastating. After the president's assassination, the country collapsed further into unprecedented gang-fueled chaos, which has driven nearly 1.5 million Haitians from their homes and worsened a humanitarian crisis in which 1 in 2 Haitians currently do not have enough to eat . With large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, considered too unsafe to travel, officials have not been able to hold elections to select Moïse's replacement . The convictions may provide accountability, but Haiti's road to stability