Judge, investigators say Haitian prime minister involved in president’s assassination

Investigators and a judge allege that Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry was involved in the July assassination of the country’s former president, Jovenel Moïse. 

Moïse was assassinated in July in his home, where he was shot a dozen times and killed. His wife, Martine Moïse, was also shot during the attack but survived.

Haitian authorities said former Haitian anti-corruption official Joseph Felix Badio was in charge of the group of more than two dozen men that carried out the shooting, according to CNN. 

Investigators were tipped off that Badio, who was by then on the run, was set to meet with Henry in September, according to CNN.

By that time, the two men had already met twice in person since Moïse’s death, and investigators had suspected for weeks that Henry was involved in the assassination, according to investigators, per the network. Believing the upcoming meeting would help connect the prime minister to the crime, investigators planned to arrest both men following the event.

But word of the planned raid leaked, investigators told CNN, and the meeting ultimately did not take place.

“Henry is at the center of everything,” an investigator said to CNN. “All he has done since taking over as PM is obstruct (the investigation) and f**k us over.”

Multiple law enforcement sources, who were not identified for security reasons, told the network that Henry was allegedly involved in both planning the assassination and covering it up.

Judge Garry Orélien, who was overseeing the case until recently, made similar accusations in a recording from the fall of 2021.

“Ariel (Henry) is connected and friends with the mastermind of the assassination. They planned it with him. Ariel is a prime suspect of Jovenel Moïse‘s assassination, and he knows it,” Orélien said, according to CNN, which obtained the recording.

Though Henry promised to seek justice for the former president’s murder, none of the more than 40 suspects detained in Haiti has been formally charged.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No political maneuver, no media campaign, no distraction can deter me from this goal to bring justice for President Moïse,” Henry said at the United Nations General Assembly in September of his supposed pursuit of justice for the slain president.

Two suspects, Mario Antonio Palacios and Rodolphe Jaar, were arrested and charged in the U.S. last month in connection with the assassination.