Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá and Tom Phillips report:
When Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín flew into the tourist-crowded Punta Cana airport early last month on Avianca flight 252, it was unlikely that immigration authorities would have given the 41-year-old Colombian a second look. Visitors from around the world flock to this Dominican resort in search of the sun, sea and Caribbean sand every week.
However, Grosso seems to have had very different plans: sneaking across the border into neighboring Haiti and helping with the assassination of the president there.
“Colombian mercenaries: trained, cheap and available,” headlined the largest Colombian newspaper El Tiempo on Friday after the Bogotá-based former special forces fighter was identified as one of 28 suspected murderers of Jovenel Moïse.
The presence of such a large number of foreigners among the alleged killers of the Haitian leader has shocked many, especially in Haiti itself. But for years, Colombian loaner arms have been appearing in war zones around the world, including Yemen, Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan .
Many were once trained by American soldiers and, after years of fighting against insurgent groups or drug traffickers in Colombia, find work with private US military companies.
“After so many years of warfare, Colombia simply has an excess of people trained in deadly tactics,” said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola), a think tank. “Many of them were hired by private companies, often in the Middle East, where they make a lot more money than the Colombian armed forces. Others were eventually hired as paramilitary weapons for drug traffickers and landowners. And now, for everyone who planned this operation, in Haiti. “
Suspects in the murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moise are handcuffed on the floor after the arrest on instructions from the police in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. Photo: Jean Marc Hervé Abélard / AP
Two days after Moïse was shot dead in his residence in Port-au-Prince, the identity of the masterminds of the crime remains a mystery and the subject of wild speculation on the streets of the capital. But on Friday, Colombian authorities named 13 of the suspected adventurers Haitian security officials believe they were involved. Colombian Police Director General Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia told reporters that four companies were involved in “recruiting” the murder suspects but failed to identify them as their names were still under investigation.
Eleven of the men reportedly flew from Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, to the Dominican resort of Punta Cana on the afternoon of June 4. El Tiempo named them as follows: Víctor Alberto Pineda, Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín, Jhon Jairo Ramírez, Jhon Jairo Suárez, Germán Alejandro Rivera García, Maiger Franco Castañeda, Ángel Mario Yarce Sierra, Carlos Giovanny Guerrero, Francisco Eladio Uribe Ochibe Rome, Medadio Uribe Ochibe Rome Ochoa and Alejandro Giraldo Zapata. Uribe is reportedly being investigated in Colombia for his role in the forced disappearances and killing of civilians who were later portrayed as guerrillas in order to increase combat killings and earn rewards.
Two other former members of the Colombian military – Alejandro Rivera García and Duberney Capador Giraldo – are said to have arrived in the region about a month earlier, flew via Panama to the Dominican Republic before flying to the Haitian capital on May 10. Capador, 40, was reportedly killed by Haitian security forces this week while pursuing the president’s killers while Rivera was among those arrested.
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