Exclusive to DailyExpertNews: Port-au-Prince, Haiti — The smell of raw sewage and food waste permeates the air at the entrance to Haiti’s National Prison in downtown Port-au-Prince.
The well is the exposed pipe that visitors have to walk over as a liquid mix slides down the street.
A pat of even our heads from silent guards follows and then a large metal door swings open revealing a courtyard on the other side.
Haitian authorities call these men murderers. They call themselves innocent.
“We were useful idiots to someone else,” one of the men told us. “But we did not commit this crime.” Held more than five months after that deadly night, the men have not yet been formally charged.
Above the scene outside the National Penitentiary where relatives bring food for prisoners inside.
After months of negotiations, DailyExpertNews was allowed to enter the penitentiary with only paper and a pen, and was told to wait in a wooden hut in the prison courtyard. Twenty minutes later, five Colombian men who clearly weren’t expecting our visit in shorts, t-shirts and dark blue crocodile sandals approached us, looking thin and unhealthy.
Their message was consistent over an hour of conversation in their native Spanish – they are innocent, they have been tortured and they have been set up.
afraid to talk
All five men said they arrived in Haiti in June, about a month before the murder that would change their lives and plunge the country’s political landscape into chaos.
They promised somewhere between $2,700 and 3,000 a month and took the job. According to the five men DailyExpertNews spoke to and the wives of several others, they were never paid a cent.
CTU has not responded to DailyExpertNews’s previous requests for comment and it’s unclear if the company still exists.
“We were told we would provide security for a Haitian presidential candidate,” said one of the men. “We had no idea what was going to happen.”
In Haiti, they were part of a group of more than two dozen Colombians living and working together in a compound in the capital, Port-au-Prince, not far from where then-President Moise lived.
In the middle of the night on July 7, this group was loaded into a convoy that would hurtle down Pelerin Road toward the presidential compound.
The president would be fatally shot shortly afterwards. His wife, First Lady Martine Moise, was also seriously injured in the gunfire.
DailyExpertNews repeatedly asked the five inmates for more details about the murder, including what happened during the murder, who was behind it, their individual involvement, and what they did in the hours following that murder.
They insisted they were not responsible for the president’s death, but declined to answer further questions or go into details about that fateful morning for two common reasons: first, that no one currently has legal representation, and second, that they fear their lives.
“We are stuck in this prison,” said one man. “We have to stay here. I’ll scream everything out loud if I can get out of here, but now that we’re here, we’re terrified of reprisals.’
“I’m afraid of what they might do to me, but also what they might do to my family [in Colombia]’ said another man.
‘They beat us all’
Sometime after Moise was killed in the early morning hours, the five men interviewed by DailyExpertNews left in that same convoy. Their vehicles were captured on cellphone video footage captured by several local residents in the area.
But they didn’t get far before being surrounded by Haitian security forces, they said. Forced from their cars, they took shelter in a nearby empty building. Hours later, they fled the back of the building and up a steep hill, on their way to the Taiwan Embassy.
Once in custody, the beatings began, the inmates claim.
One of the Colombians was stabbed multiple times by Haitian police, while several others were beaten over the head with a gun, they said. Others were beaten, with one being assaulted so brutally that his face would be disfigured from the blows, they told DailyExpertNews.
The men said they were held in an undisclosed location for more than three weeks before being transferred to the infamous National Penitentiary.
“They held us somewhere else for 25 days, handcuffed in pairs. We went to the bathroom on the floor,” said one inmate.
The men said the beatings were continuous and brutal, and that they feared for the safety of their families back home in Colombia.
“Do you know how hard it is when they show you a picture of your family on a cell phone?” one man asked, tears in his eyes. “We had to do what they said.”
And what they had to do, each man said, was to sign their names on official statements that they didn’t give and that were written in a language they couldn’t read.
“I sat still, didn’t say a word and the officer wrote my statement for me,” said one man. “He kept looking at me and writing more, even though I hadn’t said anything. They were writing and we were silent.”
He then signed a name on a document written in French, a language he didn’t understand, he said.
All five men claimed they were forced to sign statements.
“The real people responsible for this are outside the prison and we are trapped here. We have been cheated, set up and ripped off,” said one man.
Haiti’s National Police did not respond to DailyExpertNews’s request for comment. Asked about the charges of torture in police custody, a spokesman for the Haitian federal government said the government has “nothing to hide”, noting that DailyExpertNews had “full permission to visit the Colombians”.
The same spokesperson denied that official testimonies were recorded without Colombians knowing what was being written.
“Based on credible information, they got translators to understand what to sign or not to sign,” the spokesperson said.
Little food, no legal representation
The five men have been held in Haiti’s national prison since late summer.
Prison conditions are visibly horrific, with several men crammed into a single cell. Plumbing seemed an afterthought. Rats ran across the property.
“Our lives are worth nothing here,” one of the Colombian prisoners told us.
The men say they get one plate of rice a day, or sometimes corn. Each says they’ve lost over 30 pounds. Some noticeably lose their hair and leave blotchy clumps on their heads, a clear sign of malnutrition.
“It is inhumane what is happening to us here,” said one of the men in tears.
Haiti’s leading human rights organization, The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), also describes general prison conditions as inhumane. “The prison does not have enough food, gas for cooking and adequate access to care, despite more and more inmates being taken care of over the 12 months,” they said in a report released last month.
“We fully respect human rights,” said a spokesman for the Haitian federal government. “We have no grudge against the Colombian prisoners.”
The government did not respond to questions about why the men had not yet been formally charged.
But more than five months after the murder, none of the men has legal representation — a condition for their testimonies to be heard by a judge. They say that the Haitian justice system has only offered them young lawyers with whom they could not communicate.
“They sent me a lawyer in his second semester who didn’t speak Spanish,” said one of the men. “I’m not going to trust him with my life.”
According to a person close to the case, the lawyers who had to represent the men were not students, but apprentices. Before becoming lawyers, law graduates must complete a typical two-year internship.
Although they are not fully qualified lawyers and have little experience, these apprentices are usually appointed to represent those who cannot afford a private attorney, according to Brian Concannon, an expert with decades of experience in Haiti’s legal system.
“So they are defending serious offenses when they are not allowed to appear in a simple contract case [because they are not yet practicing attorneys]Concannon said. “They don’t have a budget for research and usually don’t get paid for their time.”
The men had hoped that the Colombian government would provide them with legal assistance, but so far this has not happened.
The government of Haiti has also said that responsibility now rests with Colombia. “We hope Colombia’s government officials provide lawyers to the detainees so that they can be questioned in court.” [overseeing this case]A spokesman for the Haitian government said, adding that they cannot be officially questioned without a lawyer present.
The Colombian federal government in Bogotá did not respond to DailyExpertNews’s request for comment and the Colombian embassy in Haiti referred our questions to the State Department.
A public statement in late July said Colombian government representatives met Colombian suspects in the presence of a lawyer. However, the men we spoke to said that none of the Colombians in prison currently have legal representation.
What’s worse, the men say, they were never given an explanation of the legal basis for their long detention.
“At no time has anyone in [the legal process] looked at me and said, ‘This is why you are here,'” said one of the men. “We know why we are here, of course, but there is no rule of law or a fair trial here. Everyone should be innocent until proven guilty and we all have the right to legal representation.”
The detainees concluded the hour-long conversation with a message to the international community.
“Please find the love in your heart to understand our situation and give us the benefit of the doubt,” said one man. “The best thing that can happen is that this is brought before an international tribunal. When I’m out of the country, I’ll tell the world everything I know.”