By Alejandra Garcia on July 18, 2021
Photo: Jeanty Augustin, www.jjaugustin.com
This weekend, Haitian authorities made a revelation that does not come as a surprise to any Latin American country: the plan to assassinate President Jovenel Moise was orchestrated from Miami, Florida. The “exile headquarters,” as political scientists describe this US city, served as a platform to train the Colombian military who perpetrated the assassination of the Caribbean leader.
According to the Haitian National Police, the Miami based CTU Security recruited most of the alleged participants killed or arrested within 24 hours after the crime.
There is no shortage of related loose ends in this story. The security firm has its offices in Doral, near Miami International Airport and former President Donald Trump’s golf resort. The doctor and pastor Christian Emmanuel Sanon, the main suspect in the attack and who aspires to power, is a Haitian with many ties to the Miami area.
“For decades, the city has served as a platform for failed plots and coups: from the failed 1961 invasion of Cuba, known as the Bay of Pigs episode, to last year’s misbegotten incursion into Venezuela,” explained British journalist Julian Borger for the Miami Herald.
This time, the US -sponsored plot did not miss its mark in assassinating the leader of a country. The operation succeeded due to the lack of security in Haiti, according to US analyst Jenna Ben-Yehuda.
“Haitian elites have long relied on private security firms to ensure the country’s security. Those firms’ members probably outnumber Haiti’s national police officers,” Ben-Yehuda went on to explain.
CTU owner Antonio Intriago, a Miami-based Venezuelan businessman, boasts of police experience in Latin America and connections to special forces. He is also friends with Colombian President Ivan Duque.
The two arranged and planned the ‘Music for Venezuela: Help and Freedom’ concert, which took place on the border between the two countries on February 23, 2019, which failed at its objective to promote a political change in the Bolivarian nation.
Although authorities have not yet presented evidence of CUT’s role in the attack, many captured soldiers claimed to have been trained by the company. Intriago has neither confirmed nor denied it.
Over one week after the crime, there are still many more doubts than certainties surrounding Moise’s murder, which took place on July 7 in Port-au-Prince. Haitian authorities are still looking for answers to questions like how did the mercenaries enter the house without resistance? Who is the mastermind of the assassination, and what was he looking after? How will the power struggle be resolved? And perhaps the most important trail to follow is who stands to benefit most by the death of Moise?
Early signs suggest that the operation sought more than to kill the president. It aimed to trigger a regime change, which so far has not happened. “The attack fell short and only increased misery and chaos, which is also a Miami hallmark,” Borger added.
There is one certainty behind this tragedy: “Florida is a peninsula shaped like a dagger cutting across the Caribbean and pointing toward Latin America,” as writer and journalist Ann Louise Bardach described it in her book Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English