The following is a translation of the daily report of Samuel Robinson Institute for August 23, 2021.

The behavior of Iván Duque’s Uribista government can be described as “disturbing,” in light of the revelations that have surfaced during the judicial proceedings against the Colombian mercenaries who took part in Jovenel Moïse’s assassination in Haiti. Recently, the assassins confessed certain details that implicate Duque’s government directly in the June 7 events.

What the mercenaries have confessed  

• Captain Germán Rivera (a.k.a Mike), the leader of the commando group, declared that the former Haitian Justice official Joseph Badio had said that “everyone had to be killed… the police, the president’s security, everyone who is inside the house had to be killed.”
• Second Lieutenant Jheyner Carmona Flórez revealed that “Mike did say that we had to go in and kill everyone, we had to kill all the policemen; rather, if there was even a pet, kill the pet… he told us that we had to whack the president.”
• Carmona also declared that the very same day of the operation, they met at the home of Jaar Rodolfhe (a.k.a Dodof), a mobster from Port-au-Prince who has been accused of taking part in the conspiracy that could have helped the mercenaries obtain up to “15 or 16 weapons.” Carmona added that “there were between 4 and 5 policemen inside that office (inside the presidential residence) lying down but alive and saying: no, please, please, no, like this… they had weapons there, rifles, pistols, they had a lot of things there, they simply just didn’t use them.”
• Sergeant Duberney Capador (retired), also of Colombian nationality, supervised the operation inside the president’s house, and had been in constant communication with Rivera, who waited at the entrance.
• The group that carried out the operation reached Moïse’s private residence in six vehicles, and accompanying the group were Joseph Badio and James Solages, both Haitians, and four local policemen. Sergeant Ángel Yarce Sierra declared that “in the first vehicle rode three policemen and two of the 20 mercenaries. When they arrived at a police checkpoint, they stopped and neutralized the policemen who were there.”
• Regarding the actual perpetrator of the M4 rifle shots that killed Moïse and wounded his wife, Naiser Franco Castañeda, retired soldier, declared that “I want you to simply write down a surname and you can then investigate if this is true or not: Pineda.”

Uribismo’s “disturbing” actions

Carlos Camargo, Colombian Ombudsman, sent a humanitarian mission to Haiti to “verify the human rights situation of the Colombian nationals in that country,” when in Colombia there is an evident lack of attention to human rights issues such at the outbreak of the National Strike and the human rights violations exercised by Colombian security forces.

On July 30, Colombian Foreign Affairs Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez urged the Haitian government to comply with international human rights treaties and provide guarantees to the detained mercenaries, insisting that there were irregularities in their detention and legal assistance.

Uribista senator and former president of the Congress, Ernesto Macías, asked that the mercenaries be extradited to Colombia so that maximum punishment could be applied to them in Colombia, even though the assassination was clearly a political crime committed in Haiti against a Haitian citizen.

Why this matters

The government of Colombia did not express such concern for the well-being of Colombian nationals abroad when the Trump administration deported Colombian migrants from the United States.

Behind the assassination of the former president of Haiti there are military agents and businesspeople, both Colombian and foreign, with connections to spokespersons and members of the Colombian government and the armed forces. Among them are Antonio Intriago and Alfred Santamaría, who served as contractors for the hitmen, and who appear in photos with Iván Duque and with people from his party.

The efforts made by the Colombian government reveal an attempt to hide a criminal network that is behind Moïse’s assassination and that, like in similar operations carried out against Venezuela, connect Miami to Bogotá. Colombia is a paramilitary state whose mafia apparatus makes it a dangerous political operator for the entire hemisphere.

Translation: Orinoco Tribune