Police: Doctor arrested in Moïse assassination sought Haiti presidency

From The Miami Herald and The New York Times

A Haitian doctor who has been a fixture in Florida for more than two decades has been arrested in Haiti under suspicion that he was one of the leaders behind the middle-of-the-night assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last week, sources familiar with the investigation told the Miami Herald.

Christian Emmanuel Sanon’s name has been cited by several of the people who are in custody in the case, the Herald learned, leading the national police to arrest him as part of the ongoing investigation into the leadership of the group of 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans suspected of carrying out the assassination.

Police have also put several presidential security guards under house arrest.

Sanon’s arrest makes him the third person of Haitian descent who has been arrested in the killing. James Solages, 35, and Joseph G. Vincent, 55, Haitian Americans from South Florida, are also in police custody after turning themselves in hours after the killing. 

Haiti’s national police chief, Léon Charles, said that Dr. Sanon, 63, played a vital role in the plot.

“He arrived by private plane in June with political objectives and contacted a private security firm to recruit the people who committed this act,” he said. The firm, he said, was a Venezuelan security company based in the United States called CTU.

“I would say that the Haitian [doctor] recruited CTU and CTU recruited the Colombians. That’s the pattern,” Charles told reporters during a news briefing Sunday.

Sanon arrived in Haiti in June on board a private plane with “political motivations,” Charles said, and recruited the suspects to provide him security as the new president of Haiti. According to interviews with the Colombian suspect, the group was initially recruited to provide Sanon security as a VIP, but the mission changed and they were told to serve an arrest warrant on Moïse. Charles did not address when or how the plan changed to kill Moïse.

During a raid at his home, the authorities said, the police found a D.E.A. cap — the team of hit men who assaulted Mr. Moïse’s home appear to have falsely identified themselves as Drug Enforcement Administration agents — six holsters, about 20 boxes of bullets, 24 unused shooting targets, and four license plates from the Dominican Republic.

Continue reading The Miami Herald or The New York Times.