Colombian President Petro wants to visit Haiti, but timing isn’t right, authorities say

Colombian President Gustavo Petro was hoping to turn a visit to the island of Hispaniola this week into a twofer.

After attending Friday’s inauguration of Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader in Santo Domingo, the former left-wing guerrilla and mayor of Bogotá was hoping to lead a high-level delegation the following day across the border to Haiti, where 17 of his countrymen are currently imprisoned in connection with the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

But on Tuesday, Haiti’s transitional government wrote to the South American leader saying the current security conditions make such a visit unfeasible, two sources familiar with the letter told the Miami Herald.

The visit by Petro to Haiti would have been the first by a president in the hemisphere since regional leaders led by the United States and the 15-member Caribbean Community helped usher in a political transition in March amid a gang uprising. But it would have come at an inopportune time, a source told the Herald.

For one, the airspace between Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic remains closed on the order of the Dominican government, which led Prime Minister Garry Conille and the head of the Transitional Presidential Council, Edgard Leblanc, to decline an invitation to attend Abinader’s swearing in.

Also, Petro’s entourage of at least five high-level ministers and dozens of others in his government would require the Haitian government to reallocate armored vehicles and police at a time when Conille is trying to get the Haiti National Police and the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission to battle back gangs.

Diplomatic push

Third, the visit would coincide with a diplomatic push by Petro’s administration to get Haiti to turn over the former Colombian soldiers charged in the Haitian president’s slaying. Last month, Colombia formally wrote to the Haitian government asking for the men to be transferred to its custody. Haiti wrote back turning the request down; the Colombians have been indicted and must stand trial in Haiti.

The former commandos, who have been accused of storming Moïse’s house in the middle of the night and shooting him a dozen times, were among more than 3,600 prisoners who were inside Port-au-Prince’s National Penitentiary in March when gang leaders raided the facility.

Instead of escaping with the other inmates, the Colombians stayed put and pleaded for their freedom. Their families, who say their loved ones are innocent, have been urging Petro’s administration to intervene and secure the men’s transfer to Colombia.

Family members of some of the imprisoned Colombians contacted by the Herald and El Nuevo Herald said they had not heard of any specific plans by Petro to ask for their loved ones’ repatriation. But they remain hopeful, they said, following comments made in late June by Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo. At the time, Murillo said Bogotá was trying to reach a deal with the Haitian government that would allow the accused Colombians to be judged and serve their sentences, if convicted, in Colombia.

“We hope that together with Justice Minister Néstor Osuna and our consul [in Haiti] we can move forward in establishing the mechanism and .... repatriate those who may have a conviction, and see what mechanism we use so that those who have not been convicted can complete these processes in Colombia,” Murillo said.

Closed airspace

The airspace between Haiti and the Dominican Republic has been closed since late February, when armed gangs fired shots at Port-au-Prince’s international and domestic airports and hit a plane belonging to Haiti’s Sunrise Airways, which is also registered in the Dominican Republic.

Despite a request by Sunrise to reopen the airspace, it has remained closed, which means that Dominican authorities would have needed to open a special corridor for both Petro’s visit to Haiti and for the Haitian officials to attend Abinader’s swearing in.

Sunrise President Philippe Bayard said he asked the head of the civil aviation in the Dominican Republic on May 24 to reopen the airspace and has not received any response. “I’ve never asked for the airspace to be closed,” he said.

Taking to the X on Tuesday to respond to the news that Haitian officials are declining their invite, Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez said that he told his Haitian counterpart, Foreign Minister Dominique Dupuy, that “any flight request from the Haitian authorities would be authorized immediately as would those of the other invited dignitaries.”

“I added that for security reasons, the airspace between #RepDom and #Haití remains closed to commercial flights, but not to official, humanitarian or similar flights,” Alvarez said. “There is no impediment to Haitian authorities attending the inauguration of President Abinader. It would have been a propitious moment to restart dialogue with the transitional government.”

Haiti’s foreign ministry said Dupuy wanted assurances that the airspace would be open to all Haitians, not just government officials, and that the reopening should not be conditioned on negotiations.

Petro’s desire to visit Haiti now came as something of a surprise, even though the South American leader has been expressing his desire to visit the Caribbean nation for some time, and has publicly and privately expressed regret over his countrymen’s role in Moïse’s slaying. He has said that Colombia was freed from Spanish colonial rule by Latin America liberator Simón Bolívar, who was aided by the Republic of Haiti, so his country owes the Caribbean country a debt.

Even so, the role of Colombians in Haiti’s first presidential assassination in 102 years remains a sore point between the two nations.

The Herald has learned that as part of the proposed visit, Petro planned to bring with him a planeload of humanitarian aid that his representatives had promised to five different Haitian ministries.