PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept 20 (Reuters) \u2013 A military plane whisked 18 suspects in the 2021 killing of Haitian President Jovenel Moises out of Haiti and flew them \u200bto the United States on Sunday, according \u200cto Jason Reding Qui\u00f1ones, the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday marks the next major phase in our pursuit of accountability for the assassination,\u201d Qui\u00f1ones said in a statement posted \u200con \u200bsocial media.<\/p>\n
In May, four South Florida \u2060men were convicted of \u2060plotting to kill the Haitian president by hiring mercenaries to assassinate him at his Port-au-Prince home.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors argued during the nine-week trial in a Miami federal court \u200bthat the men assembled two dozen former Colombian soldiers and supplied them with money, guns, ammunition and tactical \u2060vests in a conspiracy to \u2060kill Moise.<\/p>\n
The 53-year-old president was shot dead \u200bin July 2021 at his private residence in the hills \u200babove Port-au-Prince, a killing that left a gaping political \u200cvacuum in the Caribbean nation and emboldened powerful gangs.<\/p>\n
The killing has prompted multiple investigations and indictments in Haiti and the United States, while giving rise to competing theories \u2060over who ordered the assassination and why.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Qui\u00f1ones said that 30 people had been indicted in connection to the \u2060crime.<\/p>\n
In Haiti, prominent \u200chuman rights activist Pierre Esp\u00e9rance, said that \u2060the transfer of the 18 suspects to \u200bthe \u200cU.S. was a \u201cdisgrace for the Haitian justice \u200bsystem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The executive \u2060director of the National Human Rights Defense Network, Esp\u00e9rance also called for an overhaul of the judicial system to allow such complicated cases to be tried inside Haiti.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince, writing by Laura Gottesdiener; Editing \u200bby Nick Zieminski)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept 20 (Reuters) \u2013 A military plane whisked 18 suspects in the 2021 killing of Haitian President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-854663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}