“I’m alive, thank God, I’m alive, but I lost my husband.”
This is how an audio published this Saturday on the Twitter account of Martine Moïse, the wife of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, assassinated on Wednesday by a group of mercenaries.
The recording, which BBC Mundo could not verify independently but confirmed by members of the Haitian government its authenticity to the AFP, EFE and Reuters agencies and also to local media, is the first public account of a potential witness to the events.
“In the blink of an eye, the mercenaries entered my house and riddled my husband with bullets,” says the voice.
“This act has no name because you have to be a criminal without limits to assassinate a president like Jovenel Moïse, without even giving him the opportunity to say a single word ”, he adds.
Martine Moïse, was seriously injured during the attack and transferred he rushes to a Miami hospital. In recent days it was reported as “serious, but stable.”
It is not clear under what circumstances would have recorded the audio.
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The recording assures that “they sent mercenaries to kill the president in his house with all his family ”so that“ there would be no transition in the country ”and because, in his opinion, the president worked to“ provide roads, water and electricity, the referendum and the elections scheduled for the end of the year. ”
President Moïse faced numerous protests in his government after receiving accusations of corruption and was questioned by the opposition for taking “authoritarian” positions when governing by decree, postponing the elections and proposing a constitutional referendum.
In February This year, the day the opposition asked him to leave office, Moïse said that an attempt to kill him and overthrow the government had been thwarted.
“The mercenaries who killed the president are in jail , there are other mercenaries who want to assassinate the president’s dream, who want to assassinate the president’s vision, who want to assassinate the ideas that the president had for the country, ”he says.
Between Thursday and Friday, the arrest of 20 mens, 18 of them Colombians and two Americans of Haitian origin who would be behind the murder, according to the Haitian National Police.
Three other Colombians were killed in the clashes of the search operation and five remain at large.
The murder
It is not yet clear who organized Wednesday’s attack or for what reason.
Vari Questions remain unanswered, including how the alleged killers were able to enter the property. Moïse’s bodyguards will be questioned next week.
Meanwhile, uncertainty grows about who should have control of the country.
Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph announced that he had taken command of the police and the Army, but a new prime minister who had been appointed by Moïse a day before his death assured that it was he who should be in charge.
This Friday, the third of the Haitian Senate that still works (after the National Assembly was left without operating after the postponement of the elections in 2019) appointed his boss, Joseph Lambert, as president.
The interim government of the Caribbean nation, for its part, took the extraordinary step of requesting that the United States and the United Nations send troops to protect the country’s infrastructure.
Haitian Elections Minister Mathias Pierre said the decision is based on fears that “fleeing mercenaries” could attack important places such as ports, airports or gas stations “to sow chaos in the country.”
The US State Department and the Pentagon confirmed receipt of the request, although they did not clarify whether they value sending troops.
The Colombian Ministry of Defense, for its part, reported that, at the request of the president, senior officials will travel to Haiti to help with the investigation, including the head of the national intelligence office, the head of the police intelligence bureau and an agent from the local Interpol bureau.
Previously, Colombia had confirmed that 17 former members of his armed forces were among those captured by the Haitian police.
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