By Sarah Marsh, Reuters — Tuesday 14 September 2021
HAVANA, 14 September (Reuters) — Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry on Tuesday replaced the chief public prosecutor who had been seeking charges against him as a suspect in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Moise was shot dead on 7 July when assassins stormed his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince. The prime minister’s dismissal of prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude came after Claude wrote to the judge overseeing the investigation to ask him to charge Henry as a suspect, citing phone records showing Henry had twice communicated with a man believed to be the mastermind behind Moise’s killing on the night of the crime. That suspect, a former justice ministry official whom Henry has publicly defended, is on the run. Claude had also written to Haitian migration services ordering them not to let the prime minister leave the country “due to serious presumption relative to the assassination of the president.”
Later on Tuesday, a letter from Henry to Claude dated 13th September emerged in which he said he was firing him for “grave administrative error,” naming Frantz Louis Juste to the post. It remains unclear whether the order is valid as Haiti’s 1987 constitution mandates that the prosecutor can only be appointed or fired by the president — a position that remains vacant. Haiti’s Office of Citizen Protection demanded Henry step down and hand himself over to the justice system. Henry retorted on Twitter that “no distraction, invitation, summons, maneuver, menace or rearguard action” would distract him from his work. The prime minister subsequently announced that Haiti’s main political forces had reached an agreement to establish a transition government until the holding of presidential elections and a referendum on a new constitution next year, establishing a Council of Ministers under his leadership.