May 8 (Reuters) - Four South Florida men were convicted on Friday of plotting to kill Haitian President Jovenel Moise in 2021 by hiring mercenaries to assassinate him at his Port-au-Prince home, according to CBS News and other media.
Prosecutors argued during the nine-week trial in a Miami federal court that the men assembled two dozen former Colombian soldiers and supplied them with money, guns, ammunition and tactical vests in a conspiracy to kill Moise. The 53-year-old president was shot dead in July 2021 at his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince, a killing that left a gaping political vacuum in the Caribbean nation and emboldened powerful gangs.
Standing trial were Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, 53, a former FBI informant, Colombian national and U.S. permanent resident; Antonio Intriago, 62, a Venezuelan American owner of a security firm; James Solages, 40, a Haitian American handyman; and Walter Veintemilla, 57, an Ecuadorean American.
They were convicted of multiple counts of conspiracy to kill and kidnap a person outside of the United States resulting in death, and of providing material support or resources to carry out a violation resulting in death.
All four men face life in prison.
A fifth defendant, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haiti-born doctor - who court papers say wanted to be named president after Moise was killed - will be tried later due to health issues.
The killing has prompted multiple investigations and indictments in Haiti and the United States, while giving rise to competing theories over who ordered the assassination and why.
Defense lawyers for the Florida men said the government used unreliable evidence from Haiti, the Miami Herald reported. They argued their clients only intended to serve an arrest warrant on the president because he had overstayed his term.
The defendants also claimed that by the time the Colombians arrived to arrest him, Moise had already been killed by his own security forces and officials in his government.
"This is a Haitian plot and it is a Haitian conspiracy," defense attorney Emmanuel Perez said, arguing that the men were being used as scapegoats in a flawed FBI investigation, the Miami Herald reported.
A divisive figure in Haiti who declined to leave office after his term ended in February 2021, Moise's death added to the Caribbean nation's political instability and unleashed widespread gang violence.
Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said it would be a "misconception" that the case would address all the questions surrounding the killing.
"The Miami crew is just a small sliver," he said. "There are all these people accused in Haiti. The big picture is that we're not going to get the full story here."
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta)
