By: Staff Writer
June 6, 2023
A chief conspirator in former Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination was found guilty in a Florida court and sentenced to life in prison.
Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with a group of Colombian mercenaries to murder Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021. Prosecutors at his sentencing hearing in Miami said Jaar obtained the weapons used in the “commando-style” attack that killed Moïse, 53, and seriously injured his wife.
Jaar, 50, a convicted drug trafficker and US government informant, pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the US, and providing material support resulting in death.
Jaar is one of 11 people arrested and charged in US for alleged involvement in Haitian president’s killing.
In March, prosecutors had said that Jaar was “responsible for providing weapons to … co-conspirators to facilitate carrying out the operation” that resulted in Moise’s assassination.
The president was killed on July 7, 2021, when a group of armed men stormed his home in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, sending shockwaves across the Caribbean nation and around the world.
Reports that Moisie was under immiment danger was circulating for weeks prior to his assassination, but observers chalked it up to general chatter in and around Haiti and did not take his security seriously. Leading up to the assassination, Haitians were already rioting against the Moise government for what they classified as his lackadazical approach to previous corruption under former Haitian administraition’s and what was seemingly Moise’s complicity in the matters.
The Miami Herald had previously reported that Jaar, a former informant for the US government who had cooperated during an investigation into cocaine smuggling 10 years ago, could receive a more lenient sentence of less than 30 years due to his previous cooperation with federal officials.
Further complicating the matter was that many of the 11 co-conspirators were of Colombian nationality attached to a US/Venezuelan security firm, ran out of Doral Florida, by a Venezuelan émigré, Antonio Enmanuel Intriago Valera, who has since gone underground.
Reports began to circulate that Moise himself was involved with a Colombian drug cartel, but these rumours were never substantiated and quickly were dismissed.
What happens to the other 11 co-conspirators is in the hands of the US justice system.