Tag: assassinations

Former Canadian Embassy Worker Arrested In Haiti Assassination Worked For Sean Penn Relief Org

The assassination of Hatian president Jovenel Moïse has taken yet another strange twist, after ABC News reports that a Florida man arrested in connection with the hit formerly worked in Canada’s Embassy in Haiti, and also worked for a Hatian Relief Organization founded by suspected spooky actor Sean Penn following a 7.0 earthquake in 2010 that killed over 300,000 people.

James Solages, a 35-year-old Haitian-born resident of Miami, is one of 28 suspects accused by the Haitian government of participating in the deadly July 7 ambush attack that killed Moïse.

Solages, along with 55-year-old Joseph Vincent (also of Miami), claim they thought they were acting as interpreters ‘for an authorized operation to arrest the Haitian president’ by a group of Columbians, who told them Moïse was going to be arrested, not killed, according to the Washington Post.

According to NBC News, Solages worked as a bodyguard at Canada’s Embassy in Port-au-Prince, however relatives say he has no formal military training. Canada, of course, is adding as much distance as possible (via the Florida Sun-Sentinel):

Solages is also the president of a nonprofit organization with an office in North Lauderdale. FWA SA A JACMEL AVAN, which is Creole for “This Time Jacmel First,” has a mission of “rebuilding Haiti,” according to its website. The website as well as its Facebook page — both which were working Thursday — were no longer accessible Friday.

The website on Thursday said Solages claimed to be the chief commander of bodyguards for the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. However multiple news outlets are reporting that Canada’s foreign relation department said one of the men detained in the assassination (it did not name Solages) had been employed only briefly as a reserve bodyguard at its embassy by a private contractor.

Meanwhile, Solages worked as a driver and in a security capacity for Sean Penn’s J/P Haitian Relief Organization according to two sources.

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Former bodyguard at Canadian Embassy linked to Haitian president’s assassination

Two men believed to be Haitian Americans — one of them purportedly a former bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Port au Prince — have been arrested in connection with the assassination of Haiti’s president, Haitian officials said Thursday.

James Solages and Joseph Vincent were among 17 suspects detained in the brazen killing of President Jovenel Moïse by gunmen at his home in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday. Fifteen of them are from Colombia, according to Léon Charles, chief of Haiti’s National Police. He added that three other suspects were killed by police and eight others are on the run. Charles had earlier said seven were killed.

“We are going to bring them to justice,” he said as the 17 suspects sat handcuffed on the floor during a press conference Thursday night.

The oldest suspect is 55 and the youngest, Solages, is 35, according to a document shared by Mathias Pierre, Haiti’s minister of elections.

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Two Americans, Ex-Colombian Soldiers Named as Suspects in Assassination of Haitian President

Two men who are believed to hold American citizenship have been arrested in connection to the assassination of Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse.

In detail: Léon Charles, chief of Haiti’s National Police, said Thursday that out of the 17 people authorities arrested, 15 are from Colombia. The remaining two have dual U.S.-Haitian citizenship.

Colombia’s Colombia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that six of the suspects that have Colombian citizenship are former members of its army. Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia, the head of the national police in the country, said Colombia’s President Iván Duque ordered the army and police to help Haiti authorities with the probe, the Associated Press reports.

“A team was formed with the best investigators … they are going to send dates, flight times, financial information that is already being collected to be sent to Port-au-Prince,” Vargas said.

Charles said authorities believe that 28 people were involved in the assassination, including 26 Colombians.

Haiti’s minister of elections Mathias Pierre previously said that four suspects were killed in a gunfight. Earlier authorities had said that seven purported assailants were killed.

Charles said Haitian police are looking for at least eight more people.

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Haitian President Jovenel Moïse Was Assassinated At Home, According To The Acting PM

Jovenel Moïse, Haiti’s embattled president who thrust the country into deeper political turmoil during his tumultuous one term in office, was assassinated overnight at his private residence, according to the country’s acting prime minister.

Prime Minister Claude Joseph said a group of people attacked the president’s private residence and killed him, calling it an “odious, barbaric” act.

“Every measure is being taken to guarantee the continuity of the state to protect the nation,” Joseph said in the statement.

The first lady was wounded by a bullet and is receiving care, he added.

Moïse came to power in 2017 after a lengthy election process that was marred by delays and accusations of fraud.

Although he had never held political office before, Moïse was tapped for the post by the country’s previous president Michel Martelly, who stepped down in 2016 without a successor in place.

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In secret recording, Florida Republican threatens to send Russian-Ukrainian ‘hit squad’ after rival

A little-known GOP candidate in one of Florida’s most competitive congressional seats was secretly recorded threatening to send “a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad” to a fellow Republican opponent to make her “disappear.”

During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned the activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seatbecause he had access to assassins. The seat is being vacated by Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), who is running for governor.

“I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” Braddock said at one point in the conversation last week, according to the recording exclusively obtained by POLITICO. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a f—ing speed bump in the road. She’s a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood.”

Reached by text message, Braddock refused to say whether he made any threats about Luna to the personwho recorded him, Erin Olszewski.

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The Last Confession of E. Howard Hunt

Once, when the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges recently had been constant and terrible: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate, gangrene, the amputation of his left leg. It was like something was eating him up. Long past were his years of heroic service to the country.

In the CIA, he’d helped mastermind the violent removal of a duly elected leftist president in Guatemala and assisted in subterfuges that led to the murder of Che Guevara. But no longer could you see in him the suave, pipe-smoking, cocktail-party-loving clandestine operative whose Cold War exploits he himself had, almost obsessively, turned into novels, one of which, East of Farewell, the New York Times once called “the best sea story” of World War II. Diminished too were the old bad memories, of the Bay of Pigs debacle that derailed his CIA career for good, of the Watergate Hotel fiasco, of his first wife’s death, of thirty-three months in U.S. prisons – of, in fact, a furious lifetime mainly of failure, disappointment and pain. But his firstborn son – he named him St. John; Saint, for short – was by his side now. And he still had a secret or two left to share before it was all over.

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