Suarez testified that he also did not know where the president\u2019s bullet-riddled body had been kept before his July 23 burial, and acknowledged that neither he nor members of his team had examined the body themselves.<\/p>\n
The first of several federal agents the government plans to put on the stand to testify about the conspiracy to kill Haiti\u2019s president, the 10-year FBI veteran, who also spent time in the U.S. military, spearheaded the first team of agents deployed to Haiti after the killing.<\/p>\n
He and his team arrived in Port-au-Prince on July 13 and left two weeks later, on July 27. At the time, the country was in the throes of a political struggle over leadership following the killing, with the interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, initially in charge before his replacement, Ariel Henry, took over. Henry had been tapped by Mo\u00efse before his killing, but his naming was challenged by a number of organizations.<\/p>\n
Suarez said while he and his team had received a formal briefing by Colombian law enforcement agents who arrived in Haiti before the FBI did, they did not seek a formal briefing from Haitian authorities or from other U.S. law enforcement agencies in Haiti, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, which maintains a permanent presence in the country, or Homeland Security Investigations.<\/p>\n
Defense lawyers asked him about possible enemies of the president, the political atmosphere at the time and whether suspicions over drug trafficking ties in the assassination were raised. After a long pause, Suarez replied, \u201dNot that I can recall.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said he could not recall the controversy surrounding Mo\u00efse in the months leading up to his death, which included a foiled Feb. 7 coup attempt and anti-government protests. His focus when he got to Haiti, he testified, was following the leads of the Colombian and South Floridians involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t think to investigate any of President Moise\u2019s enemies while you were down there?\u201d asked Marissel Descalzo, an attorney for Veintemilla. \u201cSo then you didn\u2019t investigate his enemies. You just investigated who the Haitians told you to investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six-hour search<\/p>\n
But it was the FBI\u2019s search of the house, which lasted six hours, that defense lawyers pressed on, asking why there was no fingerprint technician or others with the expertise to conduct more detailed forensic work.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou fly six people down to Haiti to do a search, and you were there at that place for six hours?\u201d asked defense attorney David Howard, one of Ortiz\u2019s lawyers. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have time to do a thorough job like swabbing for blood?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were sitting in the residence for six hours, and we had to leave,\u201d Suarez responded, \u201cWe didn\u2019t have time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suarez said he and some members of his team went to the crime scene two days after arriving in Haiti, joined by six security personnel from the State Department. They were joined at the crime scene by a Haitian judge and members of the tactical unit of the Haiti National Police, who cleared out the house room by room as they went about their search.<\/p>\n
Suarez testified that agents found bullet casings on a mattress and on the floor, along with three boxes of ammunition and a flash-bang device, which can temporarily disorient people with a loud blast and bright flash. He said he personally found the device in one of the \u201cmany rooms\u201d in the house. Asked whether he had reviewed the inventory of evidence collected by Haitian police to determine whether similar devices had been recovered, Suarez said he had not.<\/p>\n
He also did not check the back of the house. \u201cYou\u2019re aware that the FBI went back down to that residence in 2023 and found a whole bunch of stuff in the back that you thought was unnecessary to go to. You\u2019re aware of that, right?\u201d Howard asked.<\/p>\n
Photographs shown to jurors depicted bullet holes in the exterior walls of the residence and inside the bedroom where Mo\u00efse was killed. Though the government wanted to show the extent to which the killers went, defense lawyes raised questions about the interior, suggesting it was staged.<\/p>\n
\u2018A hot mess\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of stuff everywhere,\u201d Descalzo said while pointing to photographs of the bedroom as she referred to the clutter as \u201ca hot mess,\u201d adding, \u201cThere\u2019s stuff all over this counter.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one bathroom photograph, she noted empty dry-cleaning bags hanging nearby and a bottle of Windex on the sink next to bags, shampoo and lotion.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know whether the Mo\u00efse family was messy,\u201d she asked, \u201cor if somebody did this to the house?\u201d<\/p>\n
Suarez replied that he could not say.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mess is quite extensive,\u201d he acknowledged, adding that investigators believed the Colombian mercenaries involved were searching looking for something. \u201cBut I can\u2019t state the condition of the house before I got there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have also introduced letters from the State Department, the Defense Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI stating that searches found no record that the defendants had ever been employed by those federal agencies.<\/p>\n
They also presented Colombian military service records showing that some of the Colombian suspects had served for more than two decades and had received special forces training.<\/p>\n