Editorial | Supporting the UN probe of Moïse’s murder

Haiti’s request that the United Nations investigate last month’s assassination of President Jovenel Moïse is not only sensible but stands on good precedent and ought to be supported by Haiti’s partner in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

At the same time, CARICOM should become far more vocal with respect to its Haitian initiatives rather than merely ceding ground to the so-called ‘core group’ (diplomats from France, Brazil, Germany, Spain, the United States, the European Union, and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS)) who have cast a long and influential policy shadow over the country, with little to show by way of political and social stability.

In this regard, CARICOM must immediately do three things: insist that Haiti is in no state to hold credible elections by September; press for the creation of a broad-based unity government to prepare for the polls in the next 24 to 30 months; and offer its expertise in rebuilding Haiti’s governance institutions, particularly an electoral system in which people can have confidence. With respect to the latter, Jamaica is in an especially good position to offer help given its success in turning around its own electoral process.

On the question of UN assistance in determining who was behind President Moïse’s assassination, it makes sense on two important bases. First, Haiti lacks the capacity to conduct what, on the face of it, will be a multistrand, transnational probe. In any event, the judicial/investigative authorities are seemingly unwilling to take it on themselves. Last week, the country’s senior magistrate, Bernard Saint-Vil, missed his self-imposed deadline for naming the investigating magistrate for the case because no one wanted the assignment.

FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT

Second, there was foreign involvement, directly or otherwise, in Mr Moïse’s killing. Among the 44 people arrested in the aftermath of the assassination, 18 were former Colombian soldiers, most of whom, if not all, were recruited through a Miami-based security company owned by a Venezuelan businessman with reported right-wing connections in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America. Three other Colombian ex-soldiers were killed in the post-assassination round-up.

It would be surprising if, as has been claimed, three Haitian-Americans, living in the United States, could have actively planned the murder of a president and operationlise such a complex plan, with US intelligence agencies being totally ignorant of the plot. Did the Americans hear, but ignore, intelligence chatter? This is a matter worthy of deeper investigation and analysis.

There are also questions of how it bypassed the Americans, given their close security ties with Colombia, that former members of the Colombian military were being recruited under their noses for mercenary service abroad, especially when the recruiter was a company operating on US soil. It matters little if the pitch was that the soldiers’ jobs would be the provision of security to important officials.

Getting to the core of these issues will require skills that Haiti does not possess as well as investigators who are insulated against national objectives and, perhaps, geopolitical policy pressures. Given its hemispheric responsibilities, the OAS, in other circumstances, might have been the body whose imprimatur should be on this proposed international investigation. However, the OAS, under this current secretary general, Luis Almagro, has lost too much of its independence and credibility, thus is too tainted to be trusted with such a sensitive job.

UNORGANISED PROBE

The United Nations (UN), in the circumstances, is the appropriate body to organise such a probe – a mandate that it has exercised in the past. For example, in 2005, on the basis of a Security Council resolution (1595), the UN established a commission that probed the Beirut bomb blast that killed Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and 22 other people. The commission concluded that there was Syrian involvement in Mr Hariri’s assassination.

Further, after the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was on a political comeback after years of exile, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, established a fact-finding commission into that suicide bomb attack. They issued a whitewashed report of her murder.

If a UN investigation were to determine who is culpable for Mr Moïse’s murder, a possible next step could be a special, United Nations-sanctioned international court to try the accused to ensure them fair and proper justice.