Miami security contractor who supplied mercenaries accused of Haiti assassination says plot was masterminded by a judge, the FBI knew about it and denies his men killed Moïse
The Miami-based security contractor who hired the Columbian mercenaries at the center of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise said the plot was all orchestrated by a former Haitian Supreme Court judge.
Antonio Intriago, owner of the CTU Security firm, said his men were actually hired to help police arrest Moise on July 7.
He added that he had been in contact with the FBI to verify that the U.S. government knew about his mission.
But when the mercenaries stormed the presidents house and got to his room, he was already dead.
His lawyers said the plan to set him up was masterminded by former Justice Windelle Coq-Thelot, who was fired earlier in the year, along with two other justices after the late-president claimed he had foiled their attempt at a coup in February.
An arrest warrant was issued for Coq-Thelot following the assassination. Authorities have yet to find her.
Antonio Intriago, pictured in the photos above, said he was initially hired to provide security for solar powered station in Haiti. The job continued to evolve to the point where his men prepared to assist police in arresting Moise on murder charges. He claims the president was already dead when the mercenaries got to his room
Intriago claims former Haitian Supreme Court Justice Windelle Coq-Thelot, pictured, plotted the president's murder after she was fired in February. The late president had accused her and at least 23 other people of killing her earlier this year. Authorities have yet to locate her
The lawyer's statements said Intriago was initially contacted by Christian Sanon, a Haitian-American preacher and doctor, to provide security for solar-power stations in a southern Haitian town, the Wall Street Journal Reports.
The 63-year-old preacher is currently under arrest and had previously said he believed God had chosen him to remove Moise from power.
Sanon was one of three U.S. citizens arrested in connection to the assassination, along with DEA informant Joseph Vincent and James Solages, 35, a maintenance worker.
Vincent had claimed that that his work with Sanon was backed by the U.S. government.
A number of the arrested suspects were also FBI informants, CNN reported.
Moïse is pictured in 2018. The president was assassinated at his mansion in Port-au-Prince in the early hours of July 8 in his bedroom
Christian Sanon's alleged involvement in the assassination plot of Haiti's Jovenel Moise
Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old Florida doctor and pastor, reportedly told Haitian professor Michel Plancher at a meeting last month it was God's 'mission' for him to replace Jovenel Moïse as the leader of the Caribbean country.
'He said he was sent by God. He was sent on a mission of God to replace Moïse,' Plancher, a civil engineering professor at Quisqueya University in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, told the New York Times.
Christian Sanon
Another associate of Sanon has suggested the US supported the plot for the Floridian to assume control of the country, saying the mission was supposed to 'save Haiti from hell, with support from the US government'.
The plan was only for Moïse to be arrested, the associate said, insisting Sanon would not have participated if he knew Moïse would be killed.
Associates described him as 'gullible' and suggested Sanon may have duped by those really behind the assassination plot.
Sanon 'is completely gullible,' one associate added. 'He thinks God is going to save everything.'
Intriago's lawyers said he was caught by surprise when the job he was hired for evolved into arresting the president of Haiti, so he reached out to some of his contacts in the FBI to update them on the plan.
'Whenever Mr. Intriago questioned the legality of providing security services for Dr. Sanon or anyone else in Haiti, the business called his FBI contacts and Mr. Intriago became confident that the United States government knew exactly what was taking place in Haiti,' his lawyers said.
They did not share who Intriago's contact in the FBI were, nor did they clarify which parts of the ever evolving story the FBI was made aware of.
The State Department previously stated that reports of the mercenaries acting on behalf of the U.S. government were false.
The Biden administration have sent investigators from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to help solve the case.
Intriago siad he had eventually received a warrant against the president for the crime of murder, which was issued by Haitian Judge Jean Roger Noelcius in February, the Wall Street Journal Reports.
Intriago added that he had received a notice from Coq-Thelot, who pretended to still be in-power, saying that Moise had become a 'dictator' after allegedly overstaying his five-year-term.
'I hereby expressly request that your company, that its members assist our Constitutional authorities, especially myself and in general the Haitian people in order to protect democracy,' she wrote in the letter to Mr. Intriago that was released by his lawyers. 'I ratify, in my capacity as a Magistrate, in my capacity as a lifetime official and that I represent the people, and protected by the actions of a Judge and a Prosecutor, by the merit given to us by the Constitution, the Law and Reason that we give and will give immunity, protection and security to their actions in our favor.'
Coq-Thelot is a former judge at La Cour de Cassation, Haiti's highest court.
She is originally from the town of Marmelade, and spent more than a decade at the Court of Appeals in Gonaives and Port-au-Prince, the Haitian Times reports.
In 2011, she was promoted to associate justice at the nation's highest court.
Moise named her as part of a group of at least 23 people who allegedly tried to kill him earlier this year.
Vincent helped the DEA in 2017 to arrest Guy Philippe (pictured left in 2004), who led a 2004 coup against then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide, on drugs trafficking charges, the sources said. Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 63, was the third US citizen arrested in Haiti over the assassination. Haitian police said they uncovered a DEA hat in his home - along with weapons
James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, are seen Thursday following their arrests. It has emerged Vincent was a DEA informant who handed over the warlord responsible for leading the last coup in the Caribbean nation
DEA and FBI informants arrested in assassination plot
Joseph Vincent helped the DEA in 2017 to arrest Guy Philippe, who led a 2004 coup against then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide, on drugs trafficking charges, the sources said.
Vincent was with Haitian Police when Philippe was handed over to the DEA at an airport. Philippe is now serving nine years in a US federal prison.
Footage from the assassination shows an attacker with an American accent shouting in English 'this is a DEA operation' as the hit squad arrived at the president's mansion.
Both US and Haitian authorities insisted in the hours after the assassination that the DEA was not involved.
A DEA official, speaking under condition of anonymity, confirmed Monday one Haitian-American man arrested in the assassination plot had worked as a US informant.
The suspect was not an active informant with the DEA at the time of the assassination, they said.
'At times, one of the suspects in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a confidential source to the DEA,' the DEA official said in an email, adding that the suspect had reached out to the DEA after the assassination.
The agency and the US State Department urged him to surrender and helped to arrange him being handed over to Haitian authorities, they said.
'Following the assassination of President Moïse, the suspect reached out to his contacts at the DEA.
She was among the three candidates chosen to replace him by the political opposition.
Intriago's ultimately claimed that it was the president's own bodyguards who betrayed and kill him, but they did not elaborate on the reason why they guards may have done so.
Haitian and Colombian police have accused Intriago of recruiting the hit squad of assassins responsible for the president's slaying.
Colombia's national police chief Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas said its company credit card was used to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for some of the Colombian suspects.
Most arrived in the Dominican Republic in June before entering Haiti within weeks, Vargas said.
Charles said Sanon flew into Haiti in June on a private jet accompanied by several of the alleged gunmen.
The suspects were told their job was to protect Sanon, but they were later ordered to arrest the president, Charles said.
Haiti's National Police chief Léon Charles said that after Moïse was killed, one of the suspected assassins contacted Sanon who then got in touch with two other people believed to be masterminds of the plot. He did not identify the masterminds or say if police know who they are.
Authorities are yet to present evidence of Sanon's involvement in the assassination plot.
Haitian police said officers found a hat emblazoned with the logo of the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Sanon's home in Haiti - along with an arsenal of weapons including 20 boxes of bullets, gun parts, four license plates from the Dominican Republic, two cars and correspondence.
Sanon launched a website last month campaigning to replace Moïse as president in, DailyMail.com has revealed.
As part of the campaign he claimed to have the backing of a key UN figure and wrote a letter to a State Department official saying he had been picked as interim leader of the country.
His political ambitions appeared to at least date back to February 2011 when he launched a website entitled 'Dr Christian Sanon Leadership pour Haiti'.
The site has since vanished but archived web pages from 2011 to 2016 include a portal for donations, a 'plan for Haiti', and news updates on Sanon's efforts to build clinics in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake.
In a YouTube video for the campaign, he hits out at the nation's leaders for corruption.
Sanon has lived in the US since the 70s including Kansas City, Missouri and most recently Florida.