Exactly two years ago, a commando of about twenty men broke into the house of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, shooting him dead and wounding his wife. Two years later, the country, deprived of a president, has plunged into a spiral of violence from which it is difficult to emerge. And crime goes unpunished in Haiti.
It was one o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, when a commando entered his room without resistance and murdered him. Most of the men were Colombian, and it was established that they had hatched their plot from Florida, in the United States.
About a dozen of them are being held there awaiting trial. One of them, Rodolphe Jaar, was sentenced last June to life imprisonment for facilitating the logistics of the murder. But in Haiti, the investigation of this complex case with transnational ramifications is at a standstill. Political obstacles, a lack of resources and technical knowledge have meant that no fewer than five successive investigating judges have been appointed, without the investigation having come to fruition.
This leaves essential questions unanswered, in particular about the motives and local responsibilities for the murder of Jovenel Moïse. Disturbingly, on the night of his death, no member of his security team came to his aid.
Since then, there has been an institutional vacuum in Haiti, without a president and with a government whose legitimacy is in question. This has left the field free for impunity and for the gangs that now control most of the country.
