U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quinones announced on Sunday that 18 suspects in the July 2021 murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse have been extradited to the United States to stand trial in Florida.
“Today marks the next major phase in our pursuit of accountability for the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse,” Quiñones wrote on social media platform X.
“Our work did not end with the men who planned and carried out this assassination,” he continued. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, to those who financed it, facilitated it, supported it, or committed crimes to make it possible.”
“Five years later, we are still bringing defendants before American courts, and we are not finished,” he said.
Quiñones did not name the 18 suspects who had been extradited, but the Associated Press noted that only 18 suspects were known to remain in custody in Haiti, including 17 Colombian soldiers and Joseph Felix Badio, a former employee of the Haitian Ministry of Justice who has been accused of masterminding the assassination.
A wheelchair-bound Badio appeared in federal court in Miami on Monday. A former member of an anti-corruption unit in Haiti, he was accused of posing as an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and coordinating the assault on Moïse’s home by dozens of mercenaries, mostly from Colombia.
Badio was allegedly involved in the early stages of the plot, when its objective was either to kidnap Moïse or force him to flee Haiti. Witnesses said he remained on board after the goal became assassination, and provided the mercenaries with both weapons and information about Moïse’s home, including where he kept money and weapons hidden.
Haitian police arrested Badio in October 2023, but have struggled to bring him to trial. Haiti’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security said over the weekend that it agreed to extradite the suspects to Florida “in order to bring to a successful conclusion the judicial proceedings.”
The ministry noted that legal proceedings in Haiti “continue to face significant difficulties.”
“While the American procedure has registered significant advances, notably arrests, prosecutions, and convictions, the Haitian procedure remains confronted with important difficulties and has not, to date, led to the holding of a trial, after five years of procedure,” the ministry said.
The Miami Herald reported on Monday that the families of the Colombian prisoners were surprised and dismayed by the sudden transfer to the United States. They said they were given no advance notice that their loved ones would be transferred to Miami and they feared they would not be able to afford defense attorneys in America with their limited resources. Some also expressed frustration that the Colombian government did little to help the detainees or block their extradition to the United States.
Most of the Colombian mercenaries claim they were innocent dupes who were tricked into participating in Moïse’s assassination, although the Miami Herald noted that some of them have been named in other trials, and they seemed to know what they were doing when they breached Moïse’s house.
The mercenaries were ostensibly hired as security for Haitian-American pastor Christian Emmanuel Sanon, another key figure in the conspiracy who will go on trial in the United States next week.
A total of 30 people have been indicted in the United States for being involved in the Moïse assassination. Many of those indictments pertain to the complicated web of illicit financial transactions that financed the attack, including fraudulent wire transfers and money diverted from Wuhan coronavirus relief funds. Nine people have been convicted on charges related to the assassination so far.