{"id":264429,"date":"2026-05-09T05:11:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T05:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/264429\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T05:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T05:11:22","slug":"miami-jury-finds-defendants-guilty-in-haiti-president-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/264429\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami jury finds defendants guilty in Haiti president murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four South Florida men were found guilty on Friday of conspiring to kidnap or kill Haiti\u2019s president, Jovenel Mo\u00efse<\/a>, who was assassinated in his home outside Port-au-Prince on July 7, 2021, plunging the Caribbean country deeper into political turmoil and gang-fueled chaos.<\/p>\n

The verdict, delivered by a 12-member jury in federal court in Miami, came nearly five years after the assassination, following 39 days of testimony over almost nine weeks. The jury spent just over two days deliberating,<\/a> after sending a question to the judge about one of the nine charges related to the shipment of bulletproof vests to mercenaries in Haiti, a country under a U.S. arms embargo.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Who was involved in killing of Haiti president Jovenel Moise?<\/a><\/p>\n

Arc\u00e1ngel Pretel Ortiz and Antonio \u201cTony\u201d Intriago, owners of Counter Terrorist Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security in Doral \u2014 collectively known as CTU \u2014 were convicted along with James Solages, who worked for CTU, and Walter Veintemilla, a Broward-area mortgage broker whom prosecutors said helped finance the plot.<\/p>\n

All the men were accused of plotting in South Florida<\/a> and hiring a squad of former Colombian soldiers to violently overthrow Haiti\u2019s president in a coup scheme that turned from his ouster to his assassination a couple of weeks before his death. The defense teams challenged those allegations by asserting that Haitian police and presidential security details killed Mo\u00efse before the Colombian hit squad arrived at his hillside home in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

But prosecutors argued that the South Florida group,<\/a> in collaboration with a few key Haitians starting in April 2021, wanted to replace Mo\u00efse with a new president willing to hire them for lucrative security and infrastructure contracts in Haiti.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case is very simple,\u201d lead Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean McLaughlin told jurors during closing arguments. \u201cThis is a case about greed, arrogance and power.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the jury\u2019s verdicts were announced, one of the defense attorneys told a group of reporters outside the federal courthouse that the four defendants plan to appeal. They\u2019ve been in custody at South Florida detention centers since their arrests.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course we are disappointed,\u201d said defense lawyer David Howard. \u201cWe thought the government\u2019s case was insufficient, but we have to respect the system and respect the verdict.\u201d<\/p>\n

For dozens of Haitian Americans who attended the two-month trial in downtown Miami, the outcome was joyful \u2014 even though the voluminous evidence did not reveal the names of the mastermind behind the deadly plot or the assailant who fatally shot Mo\u00efse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so happy, I nearly cried inside out,\u201d said Kettly Lefevre, 76, of Boynton Beach, who added she was a supporter of Mo\u00efse, like a half-dozen others gathered with her outside the courthouse. \u201cThe people in Haiti would be happy, but the government, I don\u2019t know. … I loved Jovenel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed that [this trial] was the only chance we had to have any little piece of justice,\u201d added Jacques Defrant, 71, of Miramar, who attended every day of trial \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to miss the boat on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The verdict<\/p>\n

The jury found the four defendants guilty of five counts, including a conspiracy to provide material support, a terrorism-related charge and conspiracy to lead a military expedition against a friendly nation, a violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act, which bans American citizens from waging war against any country at peace with the United States. Intriago, 63, also faced four additional counts related to shipping bulletproof vests to Haiti for about 20 former Colombian soldiers whom CTU recruited and sent to Port-au-Prince roughly a month before the killing. The jury found him guilty of three of those counts, but acquitted him of a fourth charge of violating U.S. export control laws.<\/p>\n

Though the four defendants were tried at the same time, jurors were instructed they had to consider each one individually. A fifth defendant, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haiti-born doctor and pastor who lived in South Florida, will be tried at a later date due to health issues. Initially, the South Florida plotters backed Sanon, 67, to succeed Mo\u00efse, 53, after his removal, but they abandoned him for another political candidate, a Haitian Superior Court justice,<\/a> Windelle Coq Th\u00e9lot., in the weeks before the president\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n

All four defendants could be sentenced to as long as life in prison by U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra, who plans to hold a sentencing hearing in late summer.<\/p>\n

After she read the verdicts in a packed courtroom and excused the jurors, Becerra told both sides that \u201cit was an emotional day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a case of great significance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Long before trial, six co-conspirators in the case had pleaded guilty to the conspiracy to kidnap or kill Mo\u00efse or to a lesser charge of smuggling the vests to the Colombians. Two additional individuals also took plea deals after being accused of money laundering charges related to the plot.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors presented a sweeping case \u2014 one that ran parallel to and intersected with a still-unresolved sprawling investigation by Haitian authorities,<\/a> who have charged more than 50 suspects, including the former first lady, Martine Mo\u00efse.<\/p>\n

The U.S. case focused on more than 40 witnesses, photos of the crime scene borrowed from the Haiti National Police, as well as some of the weapons used by the Colombian commandos. There were 8,000 gigabytes of data gathered by FBI agents from more than 100 electronic devices in the United States, Colombia and Haiti. The evidence was part of a 900-page summary<\/a> of text messages and voice notes showing the evolution of the plot, from plans to use gangs, to poisoning him, to detaining him at the airport after he returned from an overseas trip.<\/p>\n

\"James James Solages, 40, a Haitian-American handyman, is one of four defendants from South Florida on trial for conspiring to kill or kidnap Haiti\u2019s president, who was gunned down inside his home in Port-au-Prince on July 7, 2021. <\/p>\n

As they discussed their plans, the defendants referred to Mo\u00efse as \u201ca rat\u201d and \u201ca thief,\u201d and spoke in coded language about weapons and ammunition. They referred to them as \u201ctools\u201d and \u201cscrews\u201d as they struggled to obtain them. They also adopted the names of angels and led others to believe they were acting on behalf of the United States government, including the military and the Drug Enforcement Administration, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

On the night the Colombian commandos raided Mo\u00efse\u2019s neighborhood, Solages, 40, accompanied the squad and shouted that the operation was being carried out by the DEA and the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n

One of the leaders of the commandos, a retired Colombian Army captain,<\/a> testified for the government that the squad stormed the president\u2019s residence at the direction of Solages, who had told an inner circle of plotters hours earlier that the goal was to kill everyone in the house.<\/p>\n

A sweeping case<\/p>\n

Mo\u00efse was fatally shot in the upstairs bedroom of his rented home outside Port-au-Prince. His wife, who was the government\u2019s first witness<\/a> when the trial began on March 9,<\/a> was seriously wounded. The couple\u2019s two college-age children who hid in a bathroom with one of their dogs were unharmed. Though the president had two semi-automatic rifles in his room, they were never fired.<\/p>\n

During her testimony, Martine Mo\u00efse said she heard the assailants speaking Spanish<\/a> during the attack and rummaging through the bedroom for a mysterious document. She also testified that a necklace and Kenneth Cole watch given to her husband by the Spanish ambassador were among the items stolen from the couple\u2019s bedroom. She also commented on plastics bags of newly minted cash kept inside the couple\u2019s bedroom and said her husband used the money to pay bribes and gather intelligence.<\/p>\n

Defense lawyers for the South Florida men accused of hiring the Colombian commandos said they were accompanying Haitian authorities to provide security and execute a warrant for Mo\u00efse\u2019s arrest \u2014 a story prosecutors insisted was created after the fact.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Jason Wu reminded jurors of the video testimony of Haiti investigative judge Jean Roger Noelcius,<\/a> who signed the warrant and who said under oath, he had no authority to issue one for Mo\u00efse\u2019s arrest and fled after he saw it used in a coup attempt on Feb. 7, 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a real arrest you also have a valid arrest warrant, not a bogus warrant that they pulled off of social media or the internet,\u201d Wu said during the government\u2019s closing arguments. \u201cIt was a fake from the day he signed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: \u2018My life is in danger. Come save my life.\u2019 Haitian president\u2019s desperate final pleas<\/a><\/p>\n

As the trial wrapped up Tuesday, McLaughlin told jurors that the defense could argue for hours, but it would not change the evidence and \u201cdevastating and overwhelming\u201d testimony against the four defendants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has proved the guilt of each one of these defendants overwhelmingly as to every single count, as to every single defendant,\u201d he said, pushing back on defense lawyers\u2019 attempt to cast the killing as a Haitian-led operation that used their clients as scapegoats.<\/p>\n

McLaughlin also pushed back on the defense\u2019s efforts to question the credibility of Martine Mo\u00efse\u2019s testimony, which differ from what she initially told FBI investigators after she was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital, and to cast Haiti as a corrupt country where even police evidence cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is a woman who came in here with great strength and courage and told you what happened in her bedroom that night, and they cannot stand it because it blows a hole in the entire false theory,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cThey cannot stand her, and they have done nothing but try to call her a liar, a con artist, a murderer, a terrible mother, a terrible person.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Haitian police investigation<\/a> served as a blueprint for U.S. authorities, who did not get access to the weapons until two years after the killing.<\/p>\n

\"Arc\u00e1ngel Arc\u00e1ngel Pretel Ortiz, 53, is one of four South Florida men on trial for conspiring to kidnap or kill Haitian President Jovenel Mo\u00efse, who was gunned down on July 7, 2021. An FBI informant, he ran Counter Terrorist Federal Academy, CTU, in Doral. Public records security license <\/p>\n

Contrary to the defense\u2019s theory and argument that Mo\u00efse was already dead by the time the Colombians arrived, McLaughlin said the killing happened between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m., and \u201cwas conducted by Spanish speakers, and two of them were referred to as \u201cEl Jefe\u201d and \u201cPipe.\u201d He identified \u201cPipe\u201d as former Colombian soldier Victor Albeiro Pineda Cardona and \u201cJefe\u201d as Javier Romero, the captain of the so-called Delta team, tasked with entering the president\u2019s bedroom first. The two are currently imprisoned in Haiti along with 15 other Colombians accused in the plot.<\/p>\n

Also imprisoned in Haiti is Joseph F\u00e9lix Badio,<\/a> a former government anti-corruption chief who paid $110,000 to Mo\u00efse\u2019s guards to stand down during the assault and purchased $20,000 worth of ammunition ahead of the killing. Badio, who has not been charged in the U.S. case, obtained most of that money from Haitian businessman Rodolphe \u201cDodof\u201d Jaar, who pleaded to the main conspiracy charge.<\/p>\n

The defendants in Miami, McLaughlin and fellow prosecutors argued, were not at odds, but rather worked together \u201cday after day, week after week for months to violently overthrow the government of Haiti and to kill or kidnap\u201d Mo\u00efse.<\/p>\n

After the president\u2019s assassination, the country collapsed further into unprecedented gang-fueled chaos, which has driven nearly 1.5 million Haitians from their homes and worsened a humanitarian crisis in which 1 in 2 Haitians currently do not have enough to eat.<\/p>\n

The defense cast the killing as the work of Haitian insiders who wanted Mo\u00efse gone because of his use of armed gangs to target opponents. At the time of his death, the 53-year-old president was enmeshed in a constitutional crisis over his tenure, and his ruling by decree following his dismissal of the Parliament.<\/p>\n

While the U.S. said Moise still had a year left in office, Haitian constitutional scholars and opponents argued that he had overstayed his time, which had expired on Feb. 7, 2021, the day he was targeted in an earlier coup.<\/p>\n

Defense attorney Emmanuel Perez said Haiti is not going to remember Mo\u00efse as a \u201cmartyred son.\u201d Mo\u00efse\u2019s own actions, he added, provoked prominent Haitians, including two of the government\u2019s own witnesses \u2014 former Haiti senator Joseph Jo\u00ebl John<\/a> and Jaar \u2014to plot against him.\u201d Like Jaar, John pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge before trial and testified for the government.<\/p>\n

The total budget for the coup, according to an FBI forensics expert, was about $343,000<\/a> and was raised through a variety of sources, including about $30,000 in federal pandemic relief loans. About half of that budget was financed by Veintemilla\u2019s lending company in a loan to CTU to pay for Sanon\u2019s security in Haiti, according to the government\u2019s case. He was the plotters\u2019 initial choice to succeed Mo\u00efse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe witnesses testified that Walter was giving money for security detail, and that\u2019s not enough to convict him of a conspiracy to provide material support to kidnap and kill president Mo\u00efse,\u201d Veintemilla\u2019s lawyer, Marissel Descalzo, told jurors. \u201cThe people that gave the money to kill President Moise were in Haiti. That was Badio and Jaar. It wasn\u2019t Walter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s case, each of the defense lawyers argued, was based on flimsy evidence, including \u201ccherry-picked\u201d text messages and inconsistent witness testimonies. The forensics consisted of a broken chain of custody, including weapons provided to federal investigators by the Haitian police, and a lack of DNA and fingerprints.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot rely upon what you have been presented because it is unreliable,\u201d David Howard, one of Pretel\u2019s lawyers, told jurors. Pretel, 53, was an FBI informant at the time of the plot, and despite one of his handlers attending a meeting with him and his co-defendants, prosecutors have insisted the assassination was not endorsed by the U.S. government and that the federal agency was in the dark.<\/p>\n

Mo\u00efse was shot 12 times with a bullet to his heart delivering the fatal blow,<\/a> according to Jean Armel Demorcy, Haiti\u2019s only forensic pathologist, who testified on behalf of prosecutors. But Demorcy\u2019s extraction of only two bullets, one from the forearm and the other from the president\u2019s back, came under scrutiny.<\/p>\n

A defense team pathologist questioned how the two bullets lodged under the skin did not cause more damage if they were fired from a high-velocity rifle, as prosecutors claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose two bullets that were extracted from the president\u2019s body, it\u2019s the defense\u2019s position that those were planted,\u201d said Jonathan Friedman, a lawyer for Solages.<\/p>\n

Added Intriago\u2019s lawyer, Perez: \u201cThe only ones that could have planted it are the ones who actually murdered the president because they wanted to make it seem,\u201d like the Colombians killed him.<\/p>\n

There was no DNA or fingerprints, he added, connecting the Colombians to the murder weapon, a Palmetto Armory assault rifle, that prosecutors presented in court during their closing.<\/p>\n

But McLaughlin, the prosecutor, pushed back during closing arguments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a place for gossip, rumor, innuendo, misrepresentation, conjecture, fiction,\u201d he told jurors. \u201cFacts, evidence and testimony matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 11:02 AM.<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Miami Herald<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Jacqueline Charles<\/a><\/p>\n

Miami Herald<\/p>\n

Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize \u2014 the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four South Florida men were found guilty on Friday of conspiring to kidnap or kill Haiti\u2019s president, Jovenel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-264429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}