A federal judge in charge of the United States’ case against nearly a dozen defendants in the brazen assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse took prosecutors to task Monday for delaying the trial, saying he is troubled by the fact that the jailed defendants are being forced to spend more than a year behind bars before they can go to trial.
“It’s very troublesome to me,” U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez said. “I’m a fairly conservative guy, but I don’t believe you should round somebody up and put them in jail until you know what’s going on. ... I don’t want to have a case sitting around for a couple of years while people are in jail. It bothers me.”
There are currently 11 defendants in federal detention in Miami in the plot that led to Moïse’s July 7, 2021, assassination. Most of the defendants are charged with supporting a conspiracy to kidnap and kill the Haitian president, while two others are charged with export violations involving bulletproof vests. The vests were smuggled to former Colombian soldiers in Haiti who allegedly carried out the fatal shooting of Moïse and seriously wounded his wife, Martine.
