Suspected Assassins of Haitian President MoĆÆse Trained by US, Linked to Pro-Coup Oligarchy
By Dan Cohen – Jul 9, 2021
As the investigation into MoĆÆseās murder unfolds, the U.S. is laying the groundwork to deploy troops into Haiti for the fourth time in 106 years, at the request of a figure it has spent decades grooming.
PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI āĀ As shock grips the Caribbean island nation of Haiti following the assassination of President Jovenel MoĆÆse, the Haitian government has carried out a campaign to arrest suspects it alleges are responsible for the murder.
Haitian Director of National Police Leon Charles announced at a press conference that the assassination squad that killed Moise is comprised of 28 foreigners, including two Haitian-Americans and 26 Colombian nationals. Fifteen of those Colombians have been detained while three were killed in a gun battle and eight remain fugitives. Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano hasĀ admittedĀ that some of the Colombians are retired military personnel. Among them are at least one highly decorated soldier who received training from the United States and another who has been implicated in the murder of Colombian civilians.
Ties to oligarchs
The Haitian-Americans have been identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55. Solages lives in Fort Lauderdale where he is the CEO of EJS Maintenance & Repair and runs a nonprofit group, theĀ websiteĀ of which has since been scrubbed of information. Prior to relocating to Florida, he lived in the southern Haitian coastal city of Jacmel.
AccordingĀ toĀ The Washington Post, Solagesā Facebook profile, which has since been removed, listed him as the chief commander of bodyguards for the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. The Canadaian EmbassyĀ confirmedĀ that Solages previously worked as a security guard. While in Florida, Solages was an āavid and vocal supporter of former President Michel Martelly,ā the founder of MoĆÆseās Haitian Baldheaded Party (PHTK), according to Tony Jean-ThĆ©nor, leader of the Veye Yo popular organization in Miami, founded by the late Father GĆ©rard Jean-Juste.
TheĀ Haitian TimesĀ reportedĀ Solages also used to work as a security guard for both Reginald Boulos and Dimitri Vorbe, two prominent members of Haitiās tiny bourgeoisie. Although initially friendly to him, they both became bitter opponents of MoĆÆse. Boulos was also a prominent supporter of previous coups in 1991 and 2004 against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
TheĀ BoulosĀ family is one of the wealthiest in Haiti and owns a pharmaceutical company that, in 1996, was responsible forĀ poisoningĀ scores of children with its tainted fever medicine, some fatally. Since the July 6-8, 2018 national uprising against the IMF-dictated hike of fuel prices, Boulos has attempted to recast himself as a popular and progressive figure (after one of his stores was burned and looted), heading a political party called the Third Way Movement (MTV).
Vorbe is the executive director and vice president of SociĆ©tĆ© GĆ©nĆ©rale dāĆnergie SA, one of the largest private energy companies in Haiti which had a sweet-heart deal providing power to the energy grid that MoĆÆse sought to renegotiate after the collapse of the PetroCaribe program, under which Venezuela provided Haiti with cheap oil and credit from 2008 to 2018.
Many believe Boulos is the intellectual author and financial backer of MoĆÆseās murder.
āSolageās employment by Boulos and centrality to the operation appears to confirm the growing popular consensus in Haiti that this controversial merchant-turned-politician was the principal backer of MoĆÆseās assassination,ā explained journalist Kim Ives, continuing:
A lot of factors have been pointing to his involvement: The arrival of the mercenaries in nine brand new Nissan Patrol vehicles without license plates suggests that they were vehicles coming from the Nissan dealership owned by Reginald Boulos. The Haitian people have already concluded that Boulous was behind the assassination and have dechoukĆ©ed [uprooted] the dealership, Automeca, that he owned.ā
Colombian assassin trained by the U.S.
While the Haitian-Americans reportedly served as translators, the muscle of the assassination squad came from Colombia, the U.S.ās top regional ally, which serves as a platform for destabilization and regime change plots in the region, from Venezuela to Ecuador ā and now apparently Haiti.
The most prominent member of the hit squad is Manuel Antonio Grosso GuarĆn, a 41-year-old former special operations commando who retired from the military as aĀ memberĀ of the SimĆ³n BolĆvar No. 1 infantry battalion on December 31, 2019. According to the Colombian newspaperĀ La Semana, Grosso āhad several special combat courses, had been a member of the special forces and anti-guerrilla squads, and was known for being a skilled paratrooper who flew through the air without fear.ā
In 2013, Grosso was assigned to the Urban Anti-Terrorist Special Force group, a secretive elite militaryĀ detachmentĀ dedicated to counter-terrorism operations and carrying out kidnappings and assassinations (euphemistically known as āhigh value target acquisition and eliminationā). This branch of the military is also tasked with providing security to VIP figures from the Colombian president to U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush.
āHe was one of the most prepared,ā a source remarked toĀ La Semana.
Among Grossoās preparations was special commandĀ instructionĀ from the United States military, which supplies training and weapons to the Colombia military, one of the most repressive armed forces in the region and one that works to secure international corporate interests and drug trafficking routes.
āHow many false positivesĀ (see the following paragraph), how many social leaders, how many signers of the peace accord, will be on this man?ā left-wing Colombian Senator Gustavo Bolivar commented on Twitter.
#VerguenzaMundial
Este es Manuel Antonio Grosso GuarĆn, uno de los exmilitares colombianos del equipo de mercenarios que segĆŗn autoridades de HaitĆ habrĆa asesinado al Presidente de ese paĆs.Pero la mala imagen de Colombia la generan los escritores. pic.twitter.com/Cnrm85mNyS
— Gustavo BolĆvar (@GustavoBolivar) July 9, 2021
Grosso was joined by Francisco Eladio Uribe Ochoa, who had retired from the Colombian Army in 2019,Ā accordingĀ to the Colombian newspaperĀ El Tiempo. Eladio Uribeās wife told the newspaper that he had been investigated for participation in the execution of civilians ā a practice known as āfalse positives,ā in which the Colombian military lured at least 6,402 civilians, murdered them, and dressed them in guerrilla fatigues in order to inflate their kill numbers. This gruesome practice helped military commanders reach lofty kill-count quotas set by the United States and was incentivized with bonus pay and vacation time for soldiers who carried out the killings.
RELATED CONTENT: Fears of US Intervention in Haiti Escalate After Dictatorās Assassination
Though Eladio Uribeās wife said that he had been exonerated, his name has appeared in a file of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a court formed out of the 2016 peace accord, which has investigated several thousand cases of false positives that the Colombian government had not previously admitted. Eladio Uribe is one of two soldiers accused in the 2008 murder of Luis Carlos CĆ”rdenas in the village of Chorros Blancos in Antioquia region.
Other alleged members of the hit squad alleged to have killed MoĆÆse include:
ā¢Ā Duberney Capador Giraldo, a retired Deputy First Sergeant (killed in a gun battle in Haiti)
ā¢ āāAlejandro Giraldo Zapata
ā¢ John Jairo RamĆrez GĆ³mez
ā¢ VĆctor Albeiro PiƱera
Of the 28 total people who allegedly participated in the assassination, four of the Colombians arrived in Haiti on June 6, 2021. Grosso arrived in the Dominican city of Punta Cana and crossed the land border into Haiti two days later. Photos show him and other suspects at popular tourist sites in the Dominican Republic.
Unanswered questions and a growing consensus
Questions also remain about why MoĆÆseās security team failed to protect him, and if any of its members were complicit in the murder. Dimitri Herard, the head of the General Security Unit of the National Palace, is under investigation by the United States government for arms trafficking,Ā accordingĀ to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). While there is no evidence (but many rumors) linking him to the murder, āHerard is one of the individuals most responsible for the safety of the president.ā
While the Haitian government has identified what appear to be MoĆÆseās assassins, there is still no hard evidence ā just circumstantial ā linking them toĀ BoulosĀ and possibly even Vorbe. Nonetheless, āthere is a growing consensus that Reginald Boulous, for whom an arrest warrant [was] issued last week, paid for the mercenaries,ā according to Ives. āIt appears to be becoming more and more evident that the sector of the Haitian bourgeois, with whom Jovenel MoĆÆse was at war, are intimately linked to his assassination.ā
As the investigation into MoĆÆseās murder unfolds, the U.S. appears to be preparing the groundwork to deploy troops to Haiti at the request of a figure whom it has spent decades grooming. According toĀ The New York Times, Claude Joseph, who is in a struggle against Dr. Ariel Henry to head the Haitian state in the wake of MoĆÆseās assassination, requested the U.S. send military forces to guard key infrastructure, including the port, airport, and gasoline reserves. White House Spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that the U.S. would reinforce U.S. personnel in Haiti with FBI and DHS deployments.
CIA's NED created fake student movement GRAFNEH in #Haiti in the 2000s, which partnered with the bourgeoisie mafia to destabilize/destroy the nascent and promising democracy the poor majority fought to establish. Current de facto puppet PM Claude Joseph was one of NED's minions. https://t.co/zgz6GCQxpU pic.twitter.com/w1Q83qIfN2
— Madame Boukman – Justice 4 Haiti šš¹ (@madanboukman) July 4, 2021
Joseph is an asset of the United States and its regime-change arm, the National Endowment For Democracy. Wikileaks cablesĀ revealedĀ that he first came to prominence in 2003 as the leader of a NED-spawned student front called GRAFNEH in the lead up to the coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He also founded another NED-funded anti-Aristide group Initiative Citoyenne (Citizensā Initiative). He is reported by Haitian radio stations to have been, with prominent Haitian ex-Deputy Gary Bodeau, one of the principal assailants who severely beat the late Father GĆ©rard Jean-Juste in a PĆ©tionville church in 2005.
Jean-Juste, perhaps the most prominent supporter and surrogate of the then exiled-in-South-Africa President Aristide, had been falsely accused of involvement in the killing of his own cousin, Jacques Roche, a writer.
āEssentially, we have a U.S. puppet asking his puppeteer to invade Haiti for the fourth time in just over a century,ā Ives concluded. āBut both the region and, above all, the Haitian people are sick and tired of U.S. military interventions, which are largely responsible for the nationās current debilitated, critical state both economically and politically. Much of the most oppressed neighborhoods are now heavily armed and have already announced a revolution against the likes of Boulos, so the U.S.-led invaders of 2021 are likely to face a resistance similar to that which emerged against the U.S. Marines in 1915 and UN āpeace-keepersā in 2004, only more ferocious.ā
Featured image: Suspects in the assassination of Haitiās President Jovenel Moise are shown to the media, along with the weapons and equipment they allegedly used in the attack, at the General Direction of the police in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, July 8, 2021. Joseph Odelyn | AP
Dan Cohen
Dan Cohen is a journalist and co-producer of the award-winning documentary, Killing Gaza. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine, Latin America, the US-Mexico border and Washington DC. Follow him on Twitter at @DanCohen3000.
