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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cA 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,\u201d Vargas said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports that Haitian Americans were in custody but could not confirm or comment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Haitian Americans were identified by Haitian officials as James Solages and Joseph Vincent. Solages, at age 35, is the youngest of the suspects and the oldest is 55, according to a document shared by Haiti\u2019s minister of elections, Mathias Pierre. He would not provide further information on those in custody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Solages described himself as a \u201ccertified diplomatic agent,\u201d an advocate for children and budding politician on a website for a charity he started in 2019 in south Florida to assist people in the Haitian coastal town of Jacmel. On his bio page for the charity, Solages said he previously worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Canada\u2019s foreign relation department released a statement that did not refer to Solages by name but said one of the men detained for his alleged role in the killing had been \u201cbriefly employed as a reserve bodyguard\u201d at its embassy by a private contractor. He gave no other details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calls to the charity and Solages\u2019 associates at the charity either did not go through or weren\u2019t answered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Taiwan\u2019s foreign ministry said Haitian police had arrested 11 armed suspects who tried to break into the Taiwanese embassy early Thursday. It gave no details of the suspects\u2019 identities or a reason for the break-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs for whether the suspects were involved in the assassination of the President of Haiti, that will need to be investigated by the Haitian police,\u201d Foreign Affairs spokesperson Joanne Ou told The Associated Press in Taipei.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police were alerted by embassy security guards while Taiwanese diplomats were working from home. The ministry said some doors and windows were broken but there was no other damage to the embassy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haiti is one of a handful of countries worldwide that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan instead of the rival mainland Chinese government in Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Port-au-Prince, witnesses said a crowd discovered two suspects hiding in bushes, and some people grabbed the men by their shirts and pants, pushed them and occasionally slapped them. An Associated Press journalist saw officers put the pair in the back of a pickup and drive away as the crowd ran after them to a police station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey killed the president! Give them to us! We\u2019re going to burn them,\u201d people chanted outside Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crowd later set fire to several abandoned cars riddled with bullet holes that they believed belonged to the suspects. The cars didn\u2019t have license plates, and inside one was an empty box of bullets and some water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, Charles urged people to stay calm and let his officers do their work. He cautioned that authorities needed evidence that was being destroyed, including the burned cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officials have given out little information on the killing, other than to say the attack was carried out by \u201ca highly trained and heavily armed group.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not everyone was buying the government\u2019s description of the attack. When Haitian journalist Robenson Geffrard, who writes for a local newspaper and has a radio show, tweeted a report on comments by the police chief, he drew a flood of responses expressing skepticism. Many wondered how the sophisticated attackers described by police could penetrate Mo\u00efse\u2019s home, security detail and panic room and escape unharmed but then be caught without planning a successful getaway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Haitian judge involved in the investigation said Mo\u00efse was shot a dozen times and his office and bedroom were ransacked, according to the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste. It quoted Judge Carl Henry Destin as saying investigators found 5.56 and 7.62 mm cartridges between the gatehouse and inside the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mo\u00efse\u2019s daughter, Jomarlie Jovenel, hid in her brother\u2019s bedroom during the attack, and a maid and another worker were tied up by the attackers, the judge said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who assumed leadership of Haiti with the backing of police and the military, asked people to reopen businesses and go back to work as he ordered the reopening of the international airport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joseph decreed a two-week state of siege after the assassination, which stunned a nation already in crisis from some of the Western Hemisphere\u2019s worst poverty, widespread violence and political instability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haiti had grown increasingly unstable under Mo\u00efse, who had been ruling by decree for more than a year and faced violent protests as critics accused him of trying to amass more power while the opposition demanded he step down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.N. Security Council met privately Thursday to discuss the situation in Haiti, and U.N. special envoy Helen La Lime said afterward that Haitian officials had asked for additional security assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public transportation and street vendors remained scarce Thursday, an unusual sight for the normally bustling streets of Port-au-Prince. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marco Destin was walking to see his family since no buses, known as tap-taps, were available. He was carrying a loaf of bread for them because they had not left their house since the president\u2019s killing out of fear for their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEvery one at home is sleeping with one eye open and one eye closed,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the head of state is not protected, I don\u2019t have any protection whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gunfire rang out intermittently across the city hours after the killing, a grim reminder of the growing power of gangs that displaced more than 14,700 people last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said gangs were a force to contend with and it isn\u2019t certain Haiti\u2019s security forces can enforce a state of siege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really explosive situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) \u2014 Seventeen suspects have been detained so far in the stunning assassination of Haiti\u2019s president, and Haitian authorities say two are believed to hold dual U.S.-Haitian citizenship and Colombia\u2019s government says at least six are former members of its army. L\u00e9on Charles, chief of Haiti\u2019s National Police, said Thursday night that 15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":23732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-regional-and-international-news"],"yoast_head":"\n