Haitian former senator John Joel Josephwanted by the Haitian authorities in the investigation of the assassination of the president Jovenel Moise Last July, he was arrested in Jamaica, a Jamaican police source reported on Saturday.
Joseph was arrested in the night from Friday to Saturday and is currently in a police station, said the police force (JCF, in English) in a statement.
The JCF “can confirm that a Haitian national: Jean Joel Joseph and three members of his family were arrested in Jamaica on immigration-related charges,” according to the text.
Jamaican investigators contacted Haitian authorities who said Joseph “was wanted in Haiti as a suspect in the 2021 killing of the Haitian president,” it added.
The former congressman was in a house in Saint Elizabeth, district in the southwest of the island.
Moise was killed on July 7, but despite the arrest of several suspects, many uncertainties remain surrounding the crime so far.
More than 40 people, including a dozen Colombians and Haitian-Americans, are detained in connection with the assassination.
Moise’s murder deepened the already dramatic crisis in Haiti, which is experiencing a climate of insecurity due to growing gang violence and a wave of kidnappings.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has been in charge of the government since Moise’s death, told AFP that he, too, had been the target of an attempted murder during the national holiday this month.
Already in January, the Haitian authorities had published a wanted poster for John Joel Joseph, described as a “dangerous and armed” individual.
Earlier this month, Mario Palacios, a former Colombian soldier accused of being part of the group of some 20 men who killed Jovenel Moise and seriously injured his wife at his presidential residence in Port-au-Prince, was also accused in the United States.
prosecutors of U.S They said that the plot against the late president “initially focused on carrying out a kidnapping of the president as part of an alleged arrest operation” but this “ultimately ended up being a plot to kill him.”
The United States Congress ordered an investigation on Thursday to clarify the assassination.
The Senate voted unanimously to order the State Department to produce a report within 180 days that could give a “detailed description” of the circumstances surrounding the events.
