Federal criminal proceedings in the United States against individuals accused of organizing and financing the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse moved forward in 2022, with American prosecutors building their case against Haitian-American defendants who allegedly plotted the killing from South Florida. The US proceedings represented the most advanced legal accountability process for the assassination, far outpacing the slow and troubled Haitian judicial investigation.
American prosecutors alleged that the conspiracy had been organized by Haitian-American businessmen who had aspirations of seizing political power in Haiti following Moïse’s death. The indictments described a network that recruited mercenaries, arranged financing, and coordinated logistics for an operation they allegedly believed would create a political opening they could exploit.
Defense attorneys challenged the government’s theory of the case, arguing that the evidence was circumstantial, that the investigation in Haiti had been flawed, and that some defendants had been swept up in a conspiracy they had not fully understood or participated in. The trial proceedings were expected to take months and to produce the most detailed public account yet of how the assassination had been planned and executed.
Haitian observers followed the US proceedings with intense interest, aware that whatever accountability was achieved in American courts would be far more than was likely to emerge from Haiti’s own dysfunctional judicial system. The spectacle of justice for the assassination of a Haitian president being delivered primarily by American courts rather than Haitian ones was itself a commentary on the state of Haitian institutions.