Tag: haiti

Kenya & Haiti Sign Agreement To Deploy Force To Caribbean Nation

The leaders of Kenya and Haiti inked a pact for a Kenya-led UN mission to the Caribbean nation. Nairobi plans to send 1,000 armed men, dubbed police officers, to Port-au-Prince as local authorities have all but lost control of Haiti’s capital city. The Joe Biden administration has been working for several years to create a UN force to invade Haiti to restore order. 

In October, at Washington’s urging, the UN Security Council approved a resolution that authorized Kenya to lead a UN police force in Haiti to return power to Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has faced months of violent unrest in the wake of the 2021 assassination of President Jovenal Moise.

The people of Haiti did not elect the government in Port-au-Prince. Not long after Moise’s murder, then-Prime Minister Claud Joseph resigned at the behest of Western pressure, allowing Henry to assume power in his stead.

Since then, armed gangs have seized control over most of the city under Henry’s watch, at times occupying critical infrastructure, including its main port.

After the UNSC approved the force, opposition leader Ekuru Aukot in Nairobi challenged President William Ruto’s decision to send Kenyans to Haiti. In January, the Kenyan High Court ruled in favor of Aukot, blocking the deployment. 

The president later declared he could skirt the ruling by inking a pact directly with Port-au-Prince. That “reciprocal” agreement was signed on Friday. Ruto said he and Henry “discussed the next steps to enable the fast-tracking of the deployment,” though the leaders did not offer a timeline for the operation. 

The US-backed plan to send Kenyans to Haiti has met opposition in Port-au-Prince in addition to Nairobi. Haitians have protested Henry’s request for the UN deployment, as UN peacekeepers in Haiti have a legacy of rampant sexual abuses and, causing a cholera outbreak that killed thousands.

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Widow, ex-prime minister and former police chief indicted in 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president

A judge in Haiti responsible for investigating the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise indicted his widow, Martine Moise, ex-prime minister Claude Joseph and the former chief of Haiti’s National Police, Leon Charles, among others, in a report released Monday.

The indictments are expected to further destabilize Haiti as it struggles with a surge in gang violence and recovers from a spate of violent protests demanding the resignation of current Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Dozens of suspects were indicted in the 122-page report issued by Walther Wesser Voltaire, who is the fifth judge to lead the investigation after previous ones stepped down for various reasons, including fear of being killed.

Charles, who was police chief when Moise was killed and now serves as Haiti’s permanent representative to the Organization of the American States, faces the most serious charges: murder; attempted murder; possession and illegal carrying of weapons; conspiracy against the internal security of the state; and criminal association.

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Zombies and Voodoo: The Living Dead Religion of Modern Haiti

On the list of the most well-known monsters from Hollywood movies, zombies clearly occupy one of the top positions. In their cinematographic version, they consume human flesh and brains with the explanation that this fact diminishes their pain of being dead, while humans bitten or hurt by zombies end up becoming zombies as well. In Haiti, zombies not only exist in movies, but as a day-to-day reality that is steeped in Voodoo, which revolves around spirits known as lwa. In Haitian Voodoo (or Haitian Vodou) the Iwa spirits get their names and attributes from traditional West and Central African divinities, and they are also equated with certain Roman Catholic saints.

Haiti, the first black republic, is distinguished by colonialism, poverty, zombies, and Voodoo. Situated in the Caribbean and with its capital at Port-Au-Prince, this country continues to be dominated by the existence of gangs and corruption, and the silence of the night is often interrupted by gunshots and by violent thunderstorms. The harsh living conditions in this island nation have reduced the medium life expectancy to just 43 years. Even though life goes on, just like business, each morning brings forth the necessity to clean the streets after the confrontations of the night.

The Spanish arrived in Haiti in the year 1492 and they exterminated the local indigenous population in less than ten years. Taking into consideration the fact that the Industrial Revolution had not occurred yet, slaves continued to be in high demand and colonial Haiti quickly got involved in this horrible industry. In roughly 1503, the Catholic priest Bartholomeo de las Casas came up with the idea of bringing slaves to Haiti from Africa. After this, the French rulers of Haiti, in turn, followed the Spanish model and they continued to bring slaves from Africa to Haiti with the purpose of making them work on plantations.

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Nairobi’s High Court Puts Hold on US-Backed Kenyan Troop Deployment to Haiti

Kenya’s High Court put a temporary suspension on a planned troop deployment to Haiti. The Joe Biden administration made a deal with Nairobi to deploy its soldiers to Haiti on a mission approved by the UN Security Council. The US agreed to finance the mission and train the Kenyan soldiers. 

On Friday, former presidential candidate, Ekuru Aukot, filed a petition with the high court arguing that sending troops to Haiti violated the Kenyan constitution. The high court granted a temporary block on sending the soldiers. President William Ruto’s administration will have three days to appeal. 

The Biden White House has sought a country to lead a mission in Haiti for over a year. After Canada rebuffed the US request, Washington was able to enlist Nairobi into sending 1,000 soldiers to Haiti. The White House inked a new defense agreement with Kenya and agreed to provide $100 million to finance the deployment. 

Additionally, US forces will train the Kenyan soldiers. The UN Security Council approved the deployment, but the soldiers will not operate as official UN Peacekeepers. Peacekeepers have a dark legacy in Haiti. During the UN mission to the country from 2004-17 caused a cholera outbreak that killed nearly 10,000 people and engaged in rampant rape of women. 

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4 More Arrested for Alleged Role in 2021 Assassination of Haitian President

Four more people were arrested on Tuesday and charged in connection with the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, the Justice Department announced.

Colombian national Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, 50, of Miami; Venezuelan American Antonio Intriago, 59, of Miami; and Walter Veintemilla, 54, of Weston, Florida, face charges that include conspiracy to kill or kidnap a person outside the United States.

Frederick Bergmann, 64, of Tampa, Florida, faces charges for allegedly committing export violations and smuggling ballistic vests.

Ortiz and Intriago are part of Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security (collectively known as CTU), which is based in South Florida, and Veintemilla is a principal for Worldwide Capital Lending Group, also based in South Florida, according to prosecutors.

The four men worked out of South Florida to plan and finance the plot to oust Moïse either by kidnapping or murdering him, and later replace him with someone who would serve their own political goals and financial interests. The intended replacement was Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 64, a Haitian American dual citizen with political aspirations, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors allege that in April 2021, just three months before Moïse was shot 12 times at his private home, Ortiz, Intriago, John, Solages, and Sanon met in South Florida and agreed to a plan in which Sanon would become president and would award lucrative contracts to CTU for infrastructure projects in Haiti.

Additionally, Sanon would also award them with the provision of security forces and military equipment, federal prosecutors say.

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Clinton Pastor Who Adopted Haitian Orphans Has Been Arrested For SICKENING Child Sex Crimes

According to reports, a US pastor with deep connections to the Clintons has been arrested for a slew of “sickening” child sex crimes.

The Clintons, Oprah, Donna Karan, Chan Luu, Disney, Rainn Wilson, Olivia Wilde, Maria Bello, Petra Nemcova, Ben Stiller, and Kim Kardashian were among the prominent clientele of U.S. Pastor Corrigan Clay, 43, who adopted infants in Haiti.

In January, child welfare officials in Florida confirmed that James Corrigan Clay molested the children he adopted in Haiti with his ex-partner, Shelley Jean.

His ex-wife, Shelley Clay, was in New York for a Clinton Global Initiative meeting.

Yahoo News reports: Clay sexually abused the unidentified child from January 2014 to December 2017, the indictment states. No further details are provided in the filing, except that the alleged victim was under 18. But Clay’s ex-wife, with whom he had two biological children in addition to the pair they adopted, told The Daily Beast on Friday that the illicit conduct involved one of their own kids.

Shelley Jean Clay, who split from Clay more than a decade ago and now operates a Haitian-focused crafts market in Florida, declined to provide further details about the allegations, emphasizing that she was not involved and had no idea what was happening.

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FBI arrests main suspect in Haiti president assassination

U.S. authorities have taken into custody a primary suspect in the assassination of the Haitian president. Mario Antonio Palacios is a Colombian national who fled to Jamaica and had evaded arrest for months.

Palacios, 43, was recently deported from Jamaica and, during a layover in Panama, agreed to travel to the United States, according to prosecutors for the U.S. District Court for the South District of Florida. He was taken into custody and was scheduled to appear in federal court in Miami. 

According to the federal criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday, Palacios and others entered the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on July 7, 2021, in a plot to kill President Jovenel Moise. Moise was shot 12 times and died as a result, according to an autopsy and local authorities. First lady Martine Moise also suffered multiple gunshots but survived and was treated in Miami.

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Biden 1994: ‘If Haiti Just Quietly Sunk Into The Caribbean … It Wouldn’t Matter A Whole Lot In Terms Of Our Interest’

In 1994, Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, spoke derisively of Haiti when asked if the Clinton administration would intervene after Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted in a military coup.

Biden told host Charlie Rose on PBS, “If Haiti — a god-awful thing to say — if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.”

The Daily Wire reported on Monday of the enormous surge in the influx of Haitian immigrants at the southern border:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is meeting with local officials in Del Rio, Texas, Monday amid concerns that the Biden administration’s border crisis is spinning further out of control, with thousands of Haitian migrants now camped out under a freeway overpass, waiting to be processed by United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The meeting follows a decision, made late last week, to deny most Haitian migrants entry into the United States and expel them directly back to Haiti. Flights from Texas to Port-au-Prince began on Sunday and are expected to continue Monday, according to The Associated Press.

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Men Who Killed Haiti President Revealed as FBI Informants, as Three Presidents Die After Blocking Vaccine Distribution

According to a report from the Daily Mail, one of the Americans arrested for the murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a DEA informant who handed over a warlord responsible for heading up the last coup in the country.  

The DEA has admitted some of their ‘confidential sources’ were involved in the assassination but denied the US government orchestrated the plot.

Joseph Vincent, 55, has been named by sources to the Miami Herald as one of the informants. 

Vincent was one of three US citizens arrested for being behind the early morning raid on the president’s home. The two others named are James Solages, and Christian Emmanuel Sanon. Approximately 20 Colombians are also under arrest for the assassination.

According to a report, several of the arrested suspects are FBI informants, and many of the Columbians were once trained by the US Military according to the Washington Post.

An associate of Sanon suggested that Washington DC backed the president’s assassination, claiming their friend said the mission was supposed to ‘save Haiti from hell, with full support from the US government’.  

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Pentagon admits it trained SEVEN of Haiti president’s murderers, but denies ‘encouraging’ assassination

The Pentagon’s top spokesman has confirmed that at least seven Colombians implicated in the assassination of Haiti’s president had received US training in the past, but denied it might have somehow “encouraged” the hit.

“Thus far, we’ve identified seven individuals who were former members of the Colombian military that had received some sort of … US funded and provided education and training,” Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday, stressing that such training is “very common,” and did not “[lead] to or [encourage] what happened in Haiti.”

While Kirby declined to provide details on an individual basis for the seven assassins, he said the instruction included “cadet leadership development, counter-drug operations, noncommissioned officer professional development, small-unit leadership training, human rights training, emergency medical training, some helicopter maintenance training, and those kinds of things.”

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