Exclusive: Incarcerated for the assassination of the president of Haiti, five alleged killers say they are innocent

CNN Exclusive: (Port-au-Prince, Haiti) – The smell of raw sewage and food waste permeates the air at the entrance to the Haitian National Penitentiary in central Port-au-Prince.

The fountain is the exposed pipe that visitors must walk through as a liquid mixture slides out onto the street.

An inspection follows, even of our heads, by the silent security guards and then a large metal gate opens, revealing a courtyard on the other side.

In this world exclusive, CNN arrived at the prison hoping to speak with a certain group of inmates whom the government has refused to make available so far: some of the 26 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans who, according to investigators, They entered the bedroom of Haitian President Jovenel Moise in the early morning of July 7 and killed him in a hail of gunfire.

The Haitian authorities call these men murderers. They call themselves innocent.

“We were useful idiots for someone else,” one of the men told us. “But we did not commit this crime.” More than five months in detention after that deadly night, the men have not been formally charged.

CNN was allowed into the penitentiary after months of negotiation, with only paper and a pen, and was told to wait in a log cabin in the prison yard. Twenty minutes later, five Colombian men clearly not expecting our visit walked up to us in crocs-style shorts, T-shirts, and dark blue sandals, looking emaciated and unhealthy.

In an exclusive interview, these five are the first and only suspects in the case of the assassination of the president of Haiti to speak publicly. They agreed to do so only if their identity was concealed, fearing for their own safety and that of their families.

Their message was constant during an hour-long conversation in Spanish: they are innocent, they have been tortured and they have been deceived.

Afraid to speak

The five men said they arrived in Haiti in June, about a month before the murder that would change their lives and throw the country’s political landscape into chaos.

All former Colombian soldiers told CNN they were hired as private security by a company called CTU.

Promised between $ 2,700 and $ 3,000 a month, they accepted the job. According to the five men CNN spoke to and the wives of several others, they were never paid a penny.

CTU has not responded to previous requests for comment from CNN and it is unclear if the company still exists.

“They told us we were going to provide security for a presidential candidate from Haiti,” said one of the men. “We had no idea what was going to happen.”

In Haiti, they were part of a group of more than two dozen Colombians who lived and worked together in a compound in the capital, Port-au-Prince, not far from where then-President Moise lived.

In the darkness of the night of July 7, this group boarded a convoy that would go down Pelerin Road to the presidential compound.

The president would be shot to death shortly after. His wife, First Lady Martine Moise, was also seriously injured in the shooting.

CNN repeatedly asked the five prisoners to provide more details about the murder, including what happened during the murder, who was behind it, what their individual involvement was specifically, and what they did in the hours after that murder.

They insisted they were not responsible for the president’s death, but declined to answer any further questions or go into details about that deadly morning for two common reasons: first, that neither has legal representation today, and second, that they fear for their lives. .

“We are trapped in this prison,” said one man. “We have to stay here. I will shout out loud all I know when I can get out of here, but as long as we are here, we are terrified of retaliation.”

“I’m afraid of what they might do to me, but also what they might do to my family [en Colombia]”said another man.

“They beat us all”

Sometime after Moise was assassinated in the wee hours of the morning, the five men interviewed by CNN left in that same convoy. Their vehicles were captured on cell phone video filmed by several locals in the area.

But they didn’t get very far before being apprehended by Haitian security forces, they said. Forced to get out of their cars, they took refuge in a nearby empty building. Hours later, they fled around the back of the building and climbed a steep hill, heading for the Taiwanese embassy.

According to the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a source from the Haitian security forces, the group of Colombians made their way inland, tying up two guards in the process. But Haitian law enforcement officers located them and they turned themselves in.

Once in custody, the beatings began, the prisoners allege.

One of the Colombians was stabbed multiple times by Haitian police, while several others were hit with a gun to the head, they said. Others were beaten, one of them so brutally that the beatings disfigured his face, they told CNN.

The men said that before being transferred to the notorious National Penitentiary, they were held at an undisclosed location for more than three weeks.

“They held us in another place for 25 days, handcuffed two by two. We went to the bathroom on the floor,” said one prisoner.

The men said the beatings were continuous and brutal, and that they feared for the safety of their families in Colombia.

“Do you know how difficult it is when they show you a picture of your family on a cell phone?” Asked a man, tears in his eyes. “We had to do what they said.”

And what they were asked to do, each man said, was sign their names on official statements that they didn’t give and that were written in a language they couldn’t read.

“I was sitting quietly, not saying a word and the officer was writing my statement for me,” said one man. “He kept looking at me and writing more even though I hadn’t said anything. They were writing and we were quiet.”

He then signed a name on a document written in French, a language he could not understand, he said.

The five men alleged that they had been forced to sign statements under duress.

“The real people responsible for this are outside the prison and we are trapped here. We were deceived, framed and scammed,” said one man.

The Haitian National Police did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. When asked about the allegations of torture in police custody, a spokesman for the Haitian federal government said the government “has nothing to hide” and noted that CNN had “full permission to visit Colombians.”

The same spokesperson denied that any official testimony had been recorded without the Colombians’ knowledge of what was being written.

“Based on credible information, they were provided with translators so that they would understand what to sign or not,” the spokesperson said.

Little food, no legal representation

The five men have been detained at the Haitian National Penitentiary since late summer.

Conditions in the prison are visibly dire, with several men crammed into a single cell. The sanitation appeared to be an afterthought. Rats scampered on the ground.

“Our lives are worth nothing here,” one of the Colombian prisoners told us.

The men say they receive a bowl of rice a day or sometimes corn. Each one says they have lost more than 13 kilos. Some are noticeably losing their hair and leaving uneven strands on their heads, a clear sign of malnutrition.

“What is happening to us here is inhumane,” one of the men said through tears.

Haiti’s main human rights organization, the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), also describes the general conditions in the prison as inhumane. “The prison does not have enough food, cooking gas and adequate access to care despite receiving more and more prisoners in the 12 months,” they said in a report published last month.

“We fully respect human rights,” said a spokesman for the Haitian federal government. “We do not hold a grudge against Colombian prisoners.”

The government did not respond to questions about why the men had not yet been formally charged.

But more than five months after the murder, none of the men have legal representation, a prerequisite for a judge to hear their testimony. They say that the Haitian judicial system has only offered them junior lawyers with whom they could not communicate.

“They sent me a lawyer in his second semester who did not speak Spanish,” said one of the men. “I’m not going to trust him with my life.”

According to a person close to the case, the attorneys provided to represent the men were not students, but apprentices. Before becoming practicing lawyers, law graduates must complete what is typically a two-year apprenticeship.

Although they are not fully qualified attorneys and have little experience, these apprentices are commonly appointed to represent those who cannot afford a private attorney, according to Brian Concannon, an expert with decades of experience in the Haitian legal system.

“So they are defending felony cases when they are not allowed to appear in a simple contract case. [porque aún no son abogados en ejercicio]”Concannon said.” They have no budget for research and generally are not compensated for their time. “

The men hoped that the Colombian government would provide them with some legal assistance, but that has not happened so far.

The Haitian government has also said that the responsibility now rests with Colombia. “We hope that Colombian government officials will provide lawyers to the prisoners so that they can be examined by the judge. [que supervisa este caso]”said a spokesman for the Haitian government, adding that they cannot be officially questioned without the presence of a lawyer.

The Colombian federal government in Bogotá did not respond to CNN’s request for comment, and the Colombian Embassy in Haiti referred our questions to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A public statement in late July said Colombian government representatives met with the Colombian suspects with a lawyer present. However, the men we spoke with said that none of the Colombians in the prison currently have legal representation.

To add insult to injury, the men say, they have never received an explanation of the legal basis for their lengthy detention.

“At no time did anyone in [el proceso legal] He looked me in the face and said, ‘That’s why you’re here,’ “said one of the men.” Obviously we know why we’re here, but there is no rule of law or due process here. Everyone must be innocent until proven guilty and we all have the right to legal representation. “

The prisoners concluded the hour-long conversation with a message to the international community.

“Please find the love in your hearts to understand our situation and give us some benefit of the doubt,” said one man. “The best that could happen is that this is taken to an international court. When I am out of this country, I will tell the world everything I know.”