Eighteen suspects facing federal charges for the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise have been flown to the United States.
A military flight on Sunday transported the suspects from the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, to the U.S. state of Florida, where the defendants are set to stand trial for their alleged involvement in the transnational plot to kill the former leader.
The major development comes after federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida successfully secured convictions in May against what they called “gang leaders” and “co-conspirators” implicated in the scheme to kill Moise.
The high-profile investigation is being directed by U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quinones, an appointee of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Today marks the next major phase in our pursuit of accountability for the assassination of President Jovenel Moise,” Quinones wrote on social media. “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.”
Quinones did not immediately identify the suspects being extradited, but those who remain in Haiti awaiting trial include more than a dozen Colombian soldiers and a former Haitian government official.
Read more here.
