Happy words Haitian president Jovenel Moïse told his wife before she was killed by soldiers in her house.
The widow of Jovenel Moïse – Haiti’s last president – described being shot and wounded during the assassination of her husband in 2021 when she testified Wednesday in the US government’s trial of four men charged with conspiracy in the case.
Martine Moïse returned to the dock at the Miami courthouse after testifying for about an hour the previous day. He was the prosecution’s first witness, following opening statements from lawyers on Tuesday.
Jovenel Moïse was killed in the early hours of July 7, 2021, when nearly two dozen foreign soldiers – most of them from Colombia – attacked his home near Port-au-Prince, officials said.
Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, Antonio Intriago, Walter Veintemilla and James Solages were charged in federal court in Miami with conspiring in South Florida to kidnap or kill the former Haitian leader.
The killing of Jovenel Moïse has led to unprecedented chaos in the Caribbean nation, where gang leaders have grown more violent and empowered.
Testifying on Wednesday, Martine Moïse described through a Creole interpreter how she fell asleep around 10:00 the night before the attack and woke up to the sound of gunfire about three hours later. She turned to her husband on the bed next to her and asked what was going on.
“Honey, we are dead,” said Jovenel Moïse, according to his wife’s testimony.
Martine Moïse said the gunfire continued as she crawled to look after her two grown children.
She said she then returned to her bedroom with her husband, when she and Jovenel Moïse reached the floor on either side of the bed and used it as a shield from the gunfire.
The men ended up bursting into the room and opened fire with what sounded like an automatic weapon, said Martine Moïse. He was beaten many times.
He said he heard the men talking in Spanish before someone shot Jovenel Moïse several times, killing him.
After the attackers left, Martine Moïse said he expected to find the bodies of 30 to 50 police officers who were assigned to protect the house, but they were not there.
He said later he found out that they were paid to leave their positions.
Moïse was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment and then to a Miami hospital for surgery. He stated that his right arm is still paralyzed and still in pain.
Defense attorneys asked if Moïse knew she was being investigated in Haiti in connection with her husband’s death.
She said the people who killed her husband are now in charge and said she fled the country to be safe.
She said she volunteered to answer questions from a distance, but the people who killed her husband wanted her to return to Haiti so they could kill her too.
Moïse was previously charged, but the charge was later dropped.
The attorney also questioned Moïse about inconsistencies between his testimony and previous interviews with the FBI. He insisted that his current statements were correct and could not explain the inconsistencies in the FBI reports.
Lawyers for the four men on trial argued that the investigation launched in Haiti was botched and that their clients were being used to suspect an internal coup.
According to prosecutors, South Florida was central to the planning and financing of a plot to overthrow Moïse and replace him with another of the conspirators’ choosing.
All four defendants face life sentences and plead not guilty.
Ortiz and Intriago were principals of the Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security, collectively known as CTU, while Veintemilla was principal of Worldwide Capital Lending Group. Both companies were based in South Florida.
Solages was a CTU representative in Haiti who investigators say worked with others, including Christian Sanon, a dual Haitian-American citizen who the conspirators chose to replace Moïse.
Defense attorneys say the group is working with FBI agents, U.S. Embassy officials and members of the Haitian government in what they believe is the legal arrest of the criminal president.
The security forces identified Joseph Félix Badio, a former Haitian civil servant who was arrested in Haiti in 2023, as the mastermind behind the plan to use the president’s arrest to kill Moïse.
US District Judge Jacqueline Becerra blocked the trial for more than two months.
Five others previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the US and served life sentences. A sixth was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to supplying self-defense weapons to conspirators. Sanon’s case will be scheduled at a later date.
17 Colombian soldiers and three Haitian officials are facing charges in Haiti. Gang violence, death threats and a collapsing justice system have stalled the investigation.
