The United States (US) government has revealed that some of the Cololmbian men arrested in the ongoing investigation into the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise participated in “US military training and education programs”.
Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Ken Hoffman confirmed this information in an emailed statement to Voice of America (VOA), adding that this came to light during a review of training databases.
“Our review is ongoing, so we do not have additional details at this time,” Hoffman told VOA.
Hoffman further told VOA that the US Defense Department, which trains thousands of military people from South America, Central America and the Caribbean each year, focuses its training on “respect for human rights, compliance with the rule of law and militaries subordinate to democratically elected civilian leadership”.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s President Ivan Duque told a local radio station on Thursday that most of the detained Colombians had been tricked into thinking they were to provide bodyguard services for the Haitian president, according to VOA.
“Once they were over there,” Duque said, “the information they were given changed,” and the men ended up as suspects in an assassination plot.
Authorities in Haiti have arrested 18 Colombians two Haitian Americans in connection with the killing.
Moise was shot and killed in the early-morning hours of July 7 at his private residence in Port-au-Prince. His wife, Martine, was also injured in the attack but is recovering in Miami, Florida.
