©️AFP
Port-au-Prince, July 7, 2025.-Four years after the brutal assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in his private residence in Pilgrim 5, Petion-Ville commune, on July 7, 2021, the path to justice still seems as uncertain. While the widow of the former head of state, Martine Moïse, feared for her safety, voices were raised to denounce the shortcomings and manipulations in the judicial investigation. Lawyers, human rights defenders and former collaborators denounce a sloppy investigation, political pressure and a gradual erasure of the memory of the murdered president.
The date of July 7 now marks a profound injury in the contemporary history of Haiti. Four years after the assassination of the 58th President of the Republic, SEM Jovenel Moïse, justice remains at a standstill, fuelling frustration, anger and suspicion.
In an exclusive interview granted to the station Magik 9 on Monday, July 7, lawyer Emmanuel Jeanty, legal representative of the former First Lady Martine Moïse, described the order of the investigating judge Walter Wesser Voltaire as « Judicial shame ». Jeanty has revealed that her client has still not been brought to justice because of persistent threats to her life. According to him, Moses survived three other assassination attempts after the one that killed her husband in July 2021.
For his part, the Executive Director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), Pierre Espérance, invited to the Magik Panel, deplores the lack of significant progress in this matter. According to him, the vagueness remains on the motive of the crime and on the real intellectual authors, due to weak political and police management from the very first hours of the investigation.
« The preliminary investigation of the DCPJ was overturned, the investigation was misled, and the direct involvement of the former Director General of the PNH, Léon Charles, prevented genuine autonomy of the investigators »says Mr. Esperance. He also criticized the lack of collaboration of some of the president's relatives, including the absence of testimony from Martine Moïse.
Moreover, he contests the version of the facts conveyed by the defence team of Martine Moïse. Contrary to Mr. Jeanty's statements that the former First Lady was hit by several projectiles, Pierre Espérance assures that she was hit only by one bullet.
For his part, the former adviser to President Moses, Guichard Doré, also expresses his disappointment at the collapse of the file. He mentioned « Three types of murder » suffered by Jovenel Moïse: physical, character and memory. Guichard Doré calls for a mobilization of the judiciary to restore meaning to the quest for justice.
On July 7, the memory of President Jovenel Moïse remains alive among some, but the institutions responsible for clarifying his assassination continue to raise more doubts than hopes. Time passes, pain remains, and impunity persists.
WA
