Jovenel Moise

Shot dead on 7 July 2021 in his residence in Port-au-Prince by a squad of Colombian mercenaries; the president of Haiti was killed in a conspiracy still being tried.

Overview

Moise, a businessman elected in 2016 and ruling by decree after parliament lapsed, faced gangs, protests, and constitutional disputes when a team of former Colombian soldiers, recruited through a Florida security firm and guided by Haitian emigre plotters, stormed the hillside residence at night; the president was killed and his wife Martine wounded. Twenty-six suspects were arrested in Haiti, eleven in the United States indictments including the plot financing, and trials in both countries proceed slowly amid arguments of who ordered the hit; the US prosecutors allege the plotters intended to install a compliant president. The assassination dissolved the Haitian state into gang ascendancy and foreign intervention debate, with no elected successor by 2024. The murder stands as the twenty-first century most brazen presidential assassination in the hemisphere.