Martine Moïse returned to the witness stand in a Miami courtroom on Wednesday and told jurors about the night her husband, Haiti’s former President Jovenel Moïse, was killed in their home near Port-au-Prince. Testifying through a Creole interpreter, she described waking to gunfire about three hours after she went to bed around 10 p.m. and turning to her husband to ask what was happening, according to the account she gave in federal court.
Moïse said she then crawled downstairs to check on her two adult children as the shooting continued, before returning to her and her husband’s bedroom. There, she said she and Jovenel Moïse got on the floor on either side of the bed to protect themselves from the gunfire as men eventually burst into the room and opened fire with what she said sounded like an automatic weapon. She testified that she was struck several times and that she heard men speaking in Spanish before her husband was shot multiple times and killed.
The widow also testified that after the attackers cleared out, she expected to find the dead bodies of the 30 to 50 security officers assigned to protect the house but found none. She told the jury she later learned that the officers were paid to leave their posts. Moïse said she was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment and then flown to a Miami hospital for surgery, adding that her right arm remains disabled and she still has pain.
During Wednesday’s testimony, defense lawyers pressed on what she knew about the case and what she recalled from earlier statements. The defense asked whether Moïse was aware that she was under investigation in Haiti in connection to her husband’s death, and she testified that the people behind his killing are now in power and that she fled the country for her own safety, according to her testimony. She also said she offered to answer questions remotely, but that the people who killed her husband wanted her to return to Haiti so they could also kill her.
Defense attorneys also challenged inconsistencies between Moïse’s testimony and earlier interviews with the FBI. She told the court that her current statements were correct and said she could not explain the discrepancies in the FBI reports, according to the testimony described in court coverage. The government has said that the conspirators sought to replace Moïse with someone they chose, while defense attorneys have characterized the wider investigation as chaotic and said their clients were manipulated into taking blame for an internal coup.
Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, Antonio Intriago, Walter Veintemilla and James Solages are charged in Miami federal court with conspiring in South Florida to kidnap or kill Haiti’s former leader. Prosecutors have said South Florida was a central location for planning and financing the plot to oust Moïse and replace him. The government has also said the assassination led to turmoil in Haiti, where gang leaders have grown increasingly violent and empowered.
In court filings and trial coverage of the case, prosecutors tied roles in the alleged conspiracy to specific backgrounds and companies based in South Florida. Ortiz and Intriago were principals of Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security, which prosecutors said were linked to the plot, and Veintemilla was a principal of Worldwide Capital Lending Group. Solages was described as a Counter Terrorist Unit representative in Haiti who prosecutors say coordinated with others, including Christian Sanon, a dual Haitian-U.S. citizen whom investigators initially favored to replace Moïse.
Moïse’s testimony also touched on the status of proceedings in Haiti. She testified that she had been indicted in the case, but that the charge was later annulled, according to coverage of Wednesday’s testimony. The trial has been set before U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra, who blocked out more than two months for proceedings.
Prosecutors contend that the defendants could face life sentences if convicted, and the four men pleaded not guilty. Five other people previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the U.S. and are serving life sentences, while a sixth person was sentenced to nine years after pleading guilty to providing body armor to the conspirators. In Haiti, seventeen Colombian soldiers and three Haitian officials also face charges, though gang violence, death threats and a crumbling judicial system have stalled that investigation.
The trial’s focus remains on whether prosecutors can prove that the alleged conspiracy connected South Florida to the July 7, 2021 attack in Haiti that killed Moïse and unleashed further instability in the Caribbean nation.