18 suspects accused in the 2021 killing of Haiti's president being extradited to U.S.
FILE – Colombians and Haitians who are accused of involvement in the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise are escorted in handcuffs to their court hearing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, May 26, 2025.
Odelyn Joseph/AP
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Odelyn Joseph/AP
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Eighteen suspects who were arrested in the July 2021 killing of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse were being extradited to the U.S. on Sunday, marking the end of a drawn-out judicial process in Haiti for a killing that shocked the troubled Caribbean country.
The suspects will face justice in Florida, according to Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
“Today marks the next major phase in our pursuit of accountability for the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse,” he wrote on X. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, to those who financed it, facilitated it, supported it or committed crimes to make it possible. Five years later, we are still bringing defendants before American courts, and we are not finished.”
Quiñones did not identify the suspects, and a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
The suspects who remained in Haiti awaiting trial included 17 Colombian soldiers and Joseph Badio, a former Haiti Ministry of Justice employee who was part of an anti-corruption unit. Badio, considered a key suspect, was arrested in Haiti in October 2023 after being on the run for more than two years. Defense attorneys in the U.S. for other suspects have asserted Badio was the mastermind behind a plan to use the president’s arrest to assassinate Moïse.
Authorities have said some of the suspects envisioned a coup, not an assassination, and the Colombian soldiers have testified in Haiti that they were beaten, threatened with death and forced to sign documents in a language they don’t understand.
Families of suspects surprised by extradition
Quiñones said that 30 people have been indicted in Moïse’s killing, with FBI Special Agent in Charge Brett Skiles noting that there were multiple arrests in the U.S. and abroad on Sunday.
He said that the FBI and others “remain steadfast in ensuring that all individuals who allegedly sought profit from the assassination of a head of state are held fully accountable.”
Haiti’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security said in a statement that it surrendered the suspects “to allow for their trial.”
“In order to bring to a successful conclusion the judicial proceedings…the Haitian government has decided to strengthen its cooperation with the American judicial authorities,” it said, noting that the proceedings in Haiti “continue to face significant difficulties.”
The wife of one of the suspects, Diana Marcela Arbeláez Llano, said in a phone interview Sunday from Colombia that the extradition caught her and the relatives of the other suspects by surprise.
“We never imagined that the United States would have taken them so suddenly,” she said, adding that she hopes they have the opportunity to prove their innocence.
Arbeláez said all the detained Colombians are very sick given the notoriously inhumane conditions in Haitian prisons, and that while she hopes their health will improve in the U.S., she remains worried.
“I don’t know why the United States would have taken them,” she said. “It’s a state of total uncertainty.”
Relatives of the Colombian suspects had previously complained about the repeated delays in the Haitian judicial process following their arrest in 2021, with the investigation stalled by gang violence, death threats and a crumbling judicial system.
In October 2025, justice officials in Haiti asked the U.S. and Canada for help after a local court of appeals ordered a new investigation into Moïse’s killing, the third inquiry of its kind since he was shot 12 times at his private residence in July 2021 in an attack that also injured his wife. The previous investigations were stalled because Haitian judges kept resigning from the case, fearing for their lives, and gangs seized control of the downtown Port-au-Prince courthouse where the judges were interrogating suspects.
U.S. pushes forward with prosecutions
The extraditions come as the U.S. continues to prosecute and sentence multiple other suspects in the case.
In May, a jury in Florida convicted four men in the killing, and at least five others have pleaded guilty and are serving life sentences.
Those recently convicted include Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, Antonio Intriago, Walter Veintemilla and James Solages, all of whom pleaded not guilty. A jury found them guilty of conspiring to kill or kidnap Haiti’s elected leader and providing material support for the plot.
Still awaiting trial is Christian Sanon, a Haitian-American citizen whom authorities said was initially picked by the alleged conspirators to replace Moïse. Once in power, the plan was for him to award contracts to a company known as CTU for infrastructure projects, security forces and military equipment.
Ortiz and Intriago were principals for CTU, which stood for Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security. Meanwhile, Veintemilla was a principal of Worldwide Capital Lending Group. Both companies were based in South Florida.
Suspects who previously pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court include a retired Colombian army officer and a Haitian-Chilean businessman who was once an informant for the U.S. government.
Authorities said that key fugitives in the case include Dimitri Hérard, ex-head of security at Haiti’s National Palace, who escaped two years ago after a powerful gang federation stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons.
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