US military trained ‘small number’ of the Colombian suspects in Haiti assassination, Pentagon says
Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.
“A review of our training databases indicates that a small number of the Colombian individuals detained as part of this investigation had participated in past U.S. military training and education programs while serving as active members of the Colombian Military Forces,” Lt. Col. Ken Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.
The news was first reported by the Washington Post.
Colombian officials have said 13 Colombians implicated in the attack are retired members of the country’s military, 11 of them have been arrested and two were killed as Haitian police conducted a manhunt for the killers. The commander of Colombia’s Armed Forces, Gen. Luis Fernando Navarro, said the 13 Colombians left the military between 2018 and 2020.
Moïse was murdered in his private residence on July 7 in a shocking assault that has jolted the Caribbean country and sowed political chaos among its leaders. Haitian officials have said Moïse was killed by a team of foreign “mercenaries” that included the Colombian suspects and as many as three Americans of Haitian descent.
Colombia has been a major beneficiary of U.S. military assistance for decades, with Washington spending millions of dollars annually to train and equip the country’sarmed forces. The U.S. funds have gone to helping the military stamp out Colombia’s drug trade, battle leftist guerilla fighters and increase security.
The Pentagon regularly trains thousands of troops from allied countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean, Hoffman said.
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