A former senator from Haiti has received a life sentence for plotting the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, an event that sparked chaos in the country.
John Joel Joseph is the third out of eleven individuals arrested and accused in Miami to receive a punishment for their involvement in a scheme, planned in Haiti and Florida, to recruit mercenaries to abduct or murder Moïse. Moïse, who was 53 years old, was fatally shot at his residence near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, on July 7th, 2021.
Joseph, a well-known politician and opponent of the late president’s Tet Kale party, was extradited from Jamaica in June to face charges of conspiring to commit murder or kidnapping outside the United States and providing material support resulting in death, knowing or intending that such material support would be used to prepare for or carry out the conspiracy to kill or kidnap.
Two months after Joseph made a plea deal with the government in hopes of receiving a reduced sentence, he was sentenced. As part of the agreement, he pledged to cooperate with the investigation.
At a 30-minute hearing in Miami, Federal Judge José E Martínez imposed the harshest penalty possible.
During the trial, Joseph pleaded for leniency and claimed that he had no intention of assassinating the Haitian president.
“It turned out that the plan got overwhelmed, out of hand,” Joseph said in Creole. The plan changed to kill the president “but it was never my intention”, he added.
The judge offered to reduce the sentence if the government requested it, but ultimately sentenced former Haitian senator Martínez to life in prison after hearing his case.
Martínez warned that regardless of whether or not the assassination was attempted, the individual would be entering dangerous territory.
The other two people who have been sentenced in the case are the Haitian-Chilean businessman Rodolphe Jaar and retired Colombian army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera García. Both were sentenced to life in prison. Joseph Vincent, a dual Haitian-American citizen and former confidential informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, pleaded guilty this month and is awaiting his sentencing in February 2024.
Source: theguardian.com
