A U.S. investigation into the assassination of Haiti’s president took a leap forward this week with the arrest of a convicted Haitian drug trafficker who is accused of playing a key role in providing housing, weapons and other support to a group of Colombian commandos suspected of murdering Jovenel Moïse in his home outside Port-au-Prince in July.
Rodolphe Jaar, 43, who agreed to be flown to Miami on Wednesday after his recent arrest in the Dominican Republic, is also accused of meeting with a Haitian American co-conspirator before carrying out the deadly plot and of helping him and the other ex-Colombian soldiers hide in the aftermath of Moïse’s assassination, according to an FBI criminal complaint and affidavit unsealed Thursday.
During an interview in December while in hiding in Port-au-Prince and weeks before his arrest, Jaar admitted to U.S. investigators that “he provided firearms and ammunition to the Colombians to support the assassination operation,” the FBI affidavit says. “He stated that the operation changed from an arrest ... (to remove Moïse from office) to an assassination operation after the initial plan to ‘capture’ the Haitian president at the (Port-au-Prince) airport and take him away by plane did not go forward.”
Jaar was escorted by U.S. federal agents from the Dominican Republican, where he was detained after crossing the border it shares with Haiti earlier this month.
During his first appearance in Miami federal court Thursday, Jaar was charged with providing material support resulting in the death of Haiti’s president and conspiring to kill or kidnap him outside the United States. Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis assigned the federal public defender’s office to represent him because Jaar said he has no money or assets to pay for a lawyer.
For now, Jaar will be held at the Miami Federal Detention Center, where he will be held in isolation because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he is scheduled for another court hearing on his detention next Wednesday and his arraignment on Feb. 3. Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Norkin said he will be seeking Jaar’s detention, noting that he his not only charged with a serious crime that carries a potential life sentence but he is a flight risk. He also said Jaar was convicted of cocaine trafficking a decade ago. He served only four years in prison after providing information on drug smuggling in Haiti to U.S. authorities.
Jaar is the second suspect to be arrested in the federal probe of Moïse’s assassination. In early January, U.S. authorities had arrested a former Colombian sergeant, Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios, who had fled to Jamaica after months of hiding in Haiti and was deported back to Colombia by a Jamaican judge. During a layover in Panama, he was detained and told there was an arrest warrant for him in the United States.
U.S. investigators also have their sights on a third suspect, a former Haitian senator, John Joël Joseph, who currently is in custody in Jamaica, where he is being held on an immigration violation. Joseph, whose passport lists his name as Joseph Joel John, appeared in court Thursday in Kingston, but his hearing was postponed until mid-February. He was arrested at a house in rural St. Elizabeth Parish over the weekend, along with his wife and two children after entering the English-speaking Caribbean nation by boat — again after spending months in hiding.
Although 44 Colombians, Haitians and Haitian Americans were arrested as part of Haiti’s investigation of the president’s murder on July 7, 2021, that country’s probe has run into roadblocks, including the recent firing of the investigative judge from overseeing the Haiti National Police case.
Meanwhile, more than six months after Moïse’s brazen killing, the U.S. probe is gaining significant momentum as both FBI and Homeland Security Investigations continue to focus on foreign and South Florida suspects, including a Miami-area security firm, its owner and others who are suspected of recruiting about 20 ex-Colombian soldiers and providing training, equipment and other support to them before the president’s assassination.
U.S. investigators have stitched together their own case by using the investigative work of Haiti’s judicial police, which produced a 124-page summary of their exhaustive investigation. The report, obtained by the Miami Herald, describes meetings between the various suspects, including Jaar, and cellphone logs. During their parallel investigation U.S. federal agents also obtained text messages.
According to the FBI affidavit for Jaar’s arrest, the Haitian businessman not only provided weapons to the Colombian commandos to carry out the mission targeting Moïse, but also met with an unnamed collaborator, identified as “co-conspirator #1,” one of three Haitian Americans now jailed in Haiti. The Herald has learned his name is James Solages, who claims to be a translator but was at the president’s home when he was killed and shouted that the assault was a “DEA Operation.”
According to witness statements, Jaar collaborated with Solages and others in a plot to have Moïse arrested in mid-June of last year at the Port-au-Prince airport upon his return from an official three-day trip to Turkey.
That operation, according to a Haiti National Police report obtained by the Herald, was supposed to unfold about a month before Moïse’s assassination upon his return from a trip to Turkey in mid-June.
According to the report, Solages told police that the plan was to capture Moïse at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport when he returned from Turkey, which he visited on June 17 and returned from three days later with his wife, Martine, and a large delegation. However, the plan failed because “the private plane assigned for this purpose was not available.”
“According to witness statements, Jaar was present when (Solages) secured the signature of a former Haitian judge on a written request for assistance to further the arrest and the imprisonment of President Moïse, as well as purporting to provide Haitian immunity for such actions,” the FBI affidavit says.
But after that initial plot failed, “co-conspirator #1” (Solages) traveled from Haiti to Miami on June 28 and “provided other individuals with the document,” the affidavit says. The Herald has learned that Solages shared that information with the Miami-area security firm, CTU, owned by Antonio Intriago.
“According to interviews of several co-conspirators in Haitian custody, by this point certain co-conspirators had knowledge of, or at least believed, that the plan was to assassinate rather than kidnap President Moïse,” the affidavit says. On July 1, “co-conspirator #1 (Solages) flew from Florida to Haiti to participate in the operation.”
On July 7, some of the Colombian commandos, Haiti police working security and others stormed the president’s hillside compound in Petionville and entered his home with the “intent and purpose of killing” Moïse, the affidavit says. Later that day, Jaar spoke with “co-conspirator #1” and others to assist (Solages) and the Colombians, “who were hiding and feared that they would be captured and/or killed by Haitian authorities.”
Solages was later arrested by Haitian authorities after turning himself in and is in custody in Haiti.
Jaar, who is also accused of providing financing to the plot, told federal agents that the initial aim of the operation was to arrest Moïse. But it was abandoned and the plot switched to killing him in the following weeks. Moïse, 53, was riddled with a dozen bullets, while his wife, who was also wounded, and his their two children, survived the attack.
Neither the U.S. affidavit nor the Haitian police report says why the plans were changed. But what statements gathered so far allege that the plan involved a wide cast of characters, from a Haiti-born doctor who purportedly hired the Colombians to provide him with security to two Haitian Americans who said they were translators.
During the investigation, Haiti police focused heavily on the role of Supreme Court Judge Windelle Coq Thélot, who had been fired by Moïse. months before his assassination after her name was mentioned as a replacement for him amid another attempted coup to get him out of office. Haiti police had accused the judge of signing a document seeking assistance from CTU Security.
“The Haitian (doctor) recruited CTU and CTU recruited the Colombians. That’s the pattern,” then-Haiti National Police Chief Léon Charles said back in July when he announced the arrest of Christian Emmanuel Sanon, the Haiti-born doctor accused of being an intellectual author of the plot.
CTU later included a copy of the signed document with the signature of Coq Thélot and District Attorney Gerald Norgaisse, requesting help from CTU owner Intriago. Both Coq Thélot and Norgaisse denied that the signatures were there, and Norgaisse’s boss, Bernard Saint-Vil, who oversees the judge assigned to the Haitian investigation, also said the signature didn’t belong to Norgaisse.
Now that document is back at the center of U.S. authorities’ investigation.
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