MOTIVE

Haiti President Made List of Drug Traffickers Before Assassination: NYT

President Jovenel Moïse had reportedly been preparing to hand over the list to the U.S. government.

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse had been compiling a list of names of powerful officials involved in the country’s drug trade prior to being assassinated earlier this year, according to The New York Times. The newspaper’s Sunday report added that Moïse had been planning to hand over his dossier to the U.S. government. The gunmen who broke into the presidential residence in July to kill him may have also absconded with the documents. Moïse’s wife, who was shot and played dead, remembered to the Times in July that the assassins had ransacked their room, looking for something in particular. Eventually, they declared aloud, “That’s it,” and left, she said.

Investigators probing the case have arrested 45 people, some of whom said under interrogation that retrieving the list of names had been a top priority during the July assassination, according to three senior Haitian officials. Moïse had cracked down on the drug trade, attempting to disrupt it by cleaning up the country’s customs department and destroying an airstrip known to be used by drug traffickers. “I would be a fool to think that narco-trafficking and arms trafficking didn’t play a role in the assassination,” a former U.S. special envoy to Haiti told the Times.