The Senate voted unanimously on Thursday to issue a report within 180 days with a “detailed description” of the circumstances of the assassination.
The United States Congress ordered an investigation by the State Department into the assassination in July 2021 of former Haitian President Jovenel Moise.
The Senate voted unanimously Thursday to issue a report within 180 days with a “detailed description” of the circumstances surrounding Moise’s murder.
The report, already authorized by the House of Representatives, would also analyze whether there was interference in the official investigation and whether any of those responsible for the crime worked at any time for the US government.
Earlier this month, US prosecutors charged a former Colombian soldier, Mario Palacios, of conspiring to kidnap or kill Moise in an operation in which three Colombian mercenaries were killed and others were arrested.
Who was Jovenel Moise, the assassinated president of Haiti, who ruled by decree for more than a year
To this day, questions remain about the motive for the murder of Moise, who had extended his mandate in the Caribbean country amid great controversy, since the opposition estimated that it had ended in February.
According to the Colombian police, the detainees stated that they planned to kidnap Moise and turn it over to the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry recently stated that he wants “justice to triumph for the infamous murder” of Moise.
The law passed by Congress also requires the State Department to report on human rights and aid use from the earthquake that devastated the country in 2010.
“We are very concerned that a Haitian government that is as unstable as it is corrupt will allow or encourage further human rights abuses,” Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement on Friday.
The United States “must act urgently to help our Haitian neighbors,” he added, noting that UNICEF has reported that 1.6 million people in Haiti, including 800,000 children, urgently need humanitarian assistance.
The regulations also require an investigation and pressure for accountability for the massacre in the La Saline neighborhood of Port-au-Prince in 2018, in which dozens of people died.
“For too long, the Haitian people have endured the hardships of corruption, criminal gangs, civil unrest and devastating natural disasters,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said in a statement Friday.
Haiti, the cry of freedom that was never consolidated
Without a functional parliament for two years and with a paralyzed judiciary, Haiti, the poorest country in the Caribbean, is sinking into a governance crisis.
The growing control of the gangs over the national territory hampers the hopes of an improvement in the living conditions of the population, victims of kidnappings committed daily by armed gangs. (I)
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