A Florida jury on Friday convicted four men of conspiracy in the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, a killing that sent Haiti into extraordinary turmoil and exposed how power was being organized across borders by men accused of trying to replace an elected leader with someone of their own choosing. The men — Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, Antonio Intriago, Walter Veintemilla and James Solages — were found guilty of conspiring to kill or kidnap Haiti’s elected leader and providing material support for the plot. They were also convicted of violating the U.S. Neutrality Act and could face possible life sentences.
Who Was Targeted
Moïse was killed on July 7, 2021, when about two dozen foreign mercenaries, mostly from Colombia, attacked his home near Port-au-Prince. The attack also wounded Moïse’s wife, Martine, who was flown to the U.S. for treatment. Martine Moïse was the first witness at trial, which began in March in Miami’s federal court, and she testified through a Creole interpreter that she awoke to the sounds of gunfire after midnight. She said she turned to her husband in bed next to her to ask what was going on. “Honey, we are dead,” Jovenel Moïse replied, according to his wife’s testimony.
That testimony put the violence in plain view: a president in bed, gunfire in the night, and a family dragged into the machinery of a plot that prosecutors said was designed to seize influence and profit through force.
Who Planned the Takeover
U.S. prosecutors said South Florida served as a central location for planning and financing the plot to oust Moïse and replace him with someone of the conspirators’ choosing. Prosecutors argued that the men had their own leader in mind and had hoped to enrich themselves with a new government. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones said in a statement: “These defendants pursued power, influence, and profit through violence,” and “They supported a conspiracy that crossed borders, destabilized a friendly nation, and ended with the murder of a sitting president. The jury has spoken, and the rule of law has answered.”
The case laid out a familiar arrangement of hierarchy and extraction: a political killing planned through a network of private actors, financed and coordinated from South Florida, with a foreign government treated as a prize to be handed to the preferred figure.
Ortiz and Intriago were principals of Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security, collectively known as CTU, and Veintemilla was a principal of Worldwide Capital Lending Group. Both companies were based in South Florida. Christian Sanon is a dual Haitian-American citizen whom investigators say was initially favored by the conspirators to replace Moïse. Solages was a CTU representative in Haiti who coordinated with Sanon and others, officials said. Sanon will face trial at a later date.
What the Defense Claimed
Defense attorneys argued at trial that the investigation into the assassination was a mess and that the four were manipulated into taking blame for an internal coup. They said the men believed they had a legitimate warrant signed by a Haitian judge and that they were liberating Haiti from Moïse, who had overstayed his term as president.
Those claims sat alongside the prosecution’s account of a cross-border conspiracy and the fact that the men were convicted by a Florida jury of conspiracy, material support, and violating the U.S. Neutrality Act. The trial, held in Miami federal court, turned the assassination into another courtroom contest over who gets to define legitimacy after violence has already been done.
At least five others have pleaded guilty in the conspiracy and are serving life sentences. Separately, 20 people, including 17 Colombian soldiers, face charges in Haiti. Gang violence, death threats and a crumbling judicial system have stalled an ongoing investigation. The result is a case spread across courts and countries, with the people at the bottom living through the fallout while the institutions at the top sort through blame, sentences, and competing stories about who was really in charge.