Ex-senator gets life for Haitian president’s killing, but says only wanted him arrested

A former senator in Haiti’s parliament was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison after he had previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill his country’s leader — but at a court hearing the ex-politician told a Miami federal judge that his intention was only to arrest President Jovenel Moïse, not assassinate him.

The former senator, Joseph Joël John, who also is known as John Joël Joseph to his countrymen, is the third defendant to be given the maximum sentence by U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez in the Haiti assassination case. However, he seemed to contradict his plea agreement struck with prosecutors in October. He pleaded guilty to “knowingly conspire” to provide material support to kill Haiti’s president, provide that support himself, and “knowingly” conspire to murder a person outside the United States.

But at Tuesday’s hearing, John, 52, insisted that he only participated in a plot to arrest Haiti’s president and remove him from office because the impoverished country was in turmoil under threat of a civil war.

“I was never part of any plan to assassinate him,” John said, even though he admitted in a signed factual statement with his plea agreement that he attended key meetings with several co-conspirators. They discussed carrying out the coup operation, acquiring weapons and assassinating the president. One such meeting was held the day before the assassination was carried out on July 7, 2021.

“It got out of hand,” John told the judge, as he asked for mercy. “I am very sad this ugly crime happened. ... It was not deserving for him to to be killed.”

Martinez, the judge, did not call out John for his apparently inconsistent position — but he reminded the convicted defendant that whatever his intentions may have been, he admitted to being part of a conspiracy that ended with the Haitian president’s death.

“Whether you attempted to assassinate [him] or not, you got into very dangerous territory,” Martinez told John.

Afterward, John’s defense attorney, Brian Kirlew, downplayed the apparent inconsistency, saying that his client admitted he was part of the conspiracy but that it was not his intention to kill Haiti’s president. “I think he wanted the president arrested and tried [in Haiti]” because he saw him as an illegitimate failure.

During the brief hearing, federal prosecutors asked the judge to give John a life sentence, while Kirlew argued that his client was very cooperative with investigators and deserved no more than 30 years in prison. Martinez said that he expected the prosecutors to recommend a sentence reduction for him in the future.

So far, four defendants out of 11 charged in the Miami case have pleaded guilty to their supporting roles in the deadly plot targeting Haiti’s leader more than two years ago. A fifth defendant, a Colombian commando accused of being at the president’s home during the ambush when he was riddled with bullets, is expected to plead guilty to conspiracy and related charges on Friday, court records show.

John’s assertion that he only wanted to arrest Moïse and not kill him is consistent with the testimony of another suspect in the assassination plot, Joseph Félix Badio, according to sources familiar with the Haitian police investigation. Badio, an ex-government employee who is considered a central player in the ongoing probe to figure out who killed Moïse, was arrested in Port-au-Prince in October after a cop spotted him grocery shopping. He had been on the lam for more than two years.

Both Badio and John are considered important players in the kidnapping-turned-killing plot, which initially entailed using a bogus warrant signed by a Haitian judge to arrest Moïse.

A well-known member of Haiti’s opposition, John bragged about having contacts in Washington, according to Haitians who know him. And at the height of Moïse’s growing unpopularity, John was among those who publicly called for his ouster from office.

In a resurfaced interview John gave in 2019 when Haiti was in the midst of a lockdown, he alluded to Moïse’s death, saying he hoped the leader would not suffer the same fate as the country’s founding father Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Dessalines, who declared Haiti free from France, was assassinated on October 17, 1806, while on his way to fight rebels.

“Haitian people,” John said, “we have taken an engagement to say we are going to do another October 17.”

Addressing the president’s increasing lack of popularity, John said of Moïse: “Today, he is prepared to die in power.”

In the same interview, John appealed to gang leaders and police officers, asking them to join the population in their fight against Moïse, who had began using foreign mercenaries in his security detail.

“All of the conditions are there for Jovenel to go,” John said, directing his comments to the underpaid members of the Haiti National Police, some of whom would later be accused of standing down during the president’s brazen assassination. “Jovenel sees this so clearly that he doesn’t believe in you to provide him with security that he has appealed to international mercenaries.”

He wanted to become prime minister

John, who had been detained in Jamaica before being brought to Miami last year, told FBI agents that he had met with some co-conspirators the day before they “embarked on the mission to kill President Moïse” at his suburban home outside Port-au-Prince on July 7, 2021, according to court records.

John said he helped obtain rental vehicles, made introductions to Haitian gang members and tried to get firearms for the co-conspirators’ operation targeting Haiti’s leader, according to the factual statement filed with his plea agreement. John’s goal was to become the prime minister under Moïse’s successor following the leader’s removal from office, according to an FBI affidavit.

An expansive Haiti police investigation says as John attempted to rent vehicles, he was accompanied by Vitel’homme Innocent, a gang leader who has since emerged as one of Haiti’s most dangerous figures. Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation named Innocent to its “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list and doubled an award to $2 million for information leading to his arrest. With his image splattered on billboards around South Florida, Innocent faces charges in the U.S., not for his alleged role in Moïse’s assassination, but for the kidnapping of U.S. citizens in Haiti, including 16 American missionaries.

Like John, two other defendants sentenced to life are also assisting the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Retired Colombian army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera Garcia, aka “Colonel Mike,” 45, admitted that he met with several co-conspirators from Haiti and South Florida before leading a group of former Colombian soldiers to the Haitian president’s home to kill him. In October, Rivera was sentenced to life in prison, but he is hoping to get his sentence reduced with cooperation.

Also, Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar, 51, admitted to providing weapons, lodging and money in the conspiracy to assassinate Haiti’s president. A dual Haitian and Chilean citizen, Jaar was sentenced in June to life in prison but is hoping to get his prison term decreased with cooperation. Previously, he was also convicted of drug trafficking in the United States.

John was transferred in May 2022 to Miami from Jamaica, where he had been jailed on an immigration violation. John served in the Haitian Senate from 2009-15 and worked as a political and security consultant.

After John’s transfer and arrest in Miami, his wife and two sons were allowed to come to the United States, according to his attorney, Kirlew.

“They’re here in the United States, and they’re safe,” Kirlew said after the plea hearing in October. “The hope is they can remain here.”

John, according to a Haitian police investigative report, rented five vehicles for the deadly mission five weeks before the murder plot was carried out. He was joined by a powerful gang leader, Innocent, and a former rebel leader known as “the Torturer,” Miradieu Faustin.

He’s also believed to have been an interlocutor between the various groups. On the night of the killing, he was in communication with several main suspects.

READ MORE: Made in Miami. Who was involved in killing of Haiti president Jovenel Moïse?

John was part of the plotting in the run-up to the president’s killing, according to prosecutors Frank Russo, Andrea Goldbarg and Monica Castro. The original plan was to arrest Moïse in a coup, but then it shifted in the final weeks to the plot to assassinate him.

Meeting in Doral to plot Moïse’s murder

In April 2021, John joined other co-conspirators at the Doral office of CTU Security. Among those attending the meeting: the company’s CEO, Anthony Intriago; another CTU employee, Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, who was also an FBI informant; James Solages, a Haitian American who worked for CTU; and Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian-American physician who aspired to replace Haiti’s president in a planned coup.

John also attended another meeting that month at the Weston office of Walter Veintemilla’s Worldwide Capital Lending Group, which provided $173,000 in funds for the group’s plot to remove Haiti’s leader by force. Others attending the meeting were Ortiz, Intriago, Solages and Sanon.

“At meeting, the group spoke about financial opportunities to invest in Haiti after the removal of President Moïse,” according to John’s factual statement.

John was also present at meetings in Haiti where the operation to kill the country’s leader was discussed, including one gathering at Jaar’s home the day before the assassination. Among those attending that critical meeting: Solages, Jaar, Rivera, Joseph Vincent, a Haitian American from South Florida who previously worked as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios, a Colombian commando who is accused of being involved in the assault on the president’s home.

Vincent pleaded guilty to the murder conspiracy and related charges earlier this month, and Palacios is scheduled to plead guilty to the same offenses on Friday, according to court records.

“At that time, Solages told John and others present, in substance, that the operation was going to result in the assassination of President Moïse,” according to John’s statement.

The following day, John’s co-conspirators attacked the president’s residence and fatally shot him and wounded his wife.

Miami Herald Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles contributed to this story.