Haiti's Assassinated President Had One Final Warning for His Wife

Dressed in black and speaking through a Creole interpreter, Martine Moïse broke into tears before a Miami federal jury Tuesday as she described waking just after 1 a.m. to a barrage of gunfire and watching her husband die.

"I am Martine Moïse, I am Mrs. Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated at our house," she told the court, pausing repeatedly to compose herself. "I am the First Lady of Haiti. Please forgive me. I've been waiting so long, it's been over four years since I've been waiting. Please forgive me if I'm crying."

Her testimony is the emotional centerpiece of a Miami federal trial targeting four South Florida men accused of helping orchestrate the July 7, 2021 assassination of Haiti's president at the couple's hilltop home in Petionville, outside Port-au-Prince. U.S. prosecutors argue the plot was conceived in South Florida and executed by a team of former Colombian soldiers hired through a Doral-based security firm.

Martine testified she went to bed around 10 p.m. on July 6 while her husband stayed awake to work. When the shooting erupted, she said she turned to Jovenel in terror. "There was a lot of gunfire at 1 a.m.," she testified. "I was very afraid. I was in shock as well by so many gunshots." Looking into her husband's eyes, she said, she saw the same fear. He told her: "Honey, we're dead."

She was wounded in her arm and thigh during the attack. The couple's children and their dog sheltered in a bathroom as the assault unfolded. Jovenel Moïse did not survive.

A critical detail prosecutors have emphasized: Martine testified that the men who stormed the residence spoke Spanish. That detail anchors the prosecution's case that the killing was carried out by Colombian mercenaries hired to do what began as a kidnapping plot and became a murder. Six of the 11 people charged in related U.S. prosecutions have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges connected to sending those mercenaries to Haiti.

Martine also described the security apparatus that was supposed to protect them that night, naming three officials responsible for the presidential detail: Dimitri Herard, described as head of presidential security; Jean Laguel Civil, a senior security official; and Leon Charles, then the Haitian national police chief. Her husband had contacted each of them, she testified.

The courtroom account stands in sharp relief against proceedings unfolding simultaneously in Haiti. A leaked 122-page Haitian judicial document, attributed to Judge Walther Wesser Voltaire, charges Martine with "complicity and criminal association" in the assassination, naming her among approximately 50 suspects referred to criminal court on charges including terrorism, assassination, and conspiracy. The document contains allegations from Lyonel Valbrun, then the National Palace secretary general, who claimed Martine visited the palace two days before the killing and spent five hours removing items. Joseph Felix Badio, a former Haitian Justice Ministry official named in the investigation, is cited alleging she conspired with then-Prime Minister Claude Joseph to oust her husband. Neither Martine nor her attorney has publicly responded to those specific allegations.

Martine and Jovenel Moïse had been married nearly 25 years when he was killed. They met at the University of Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince. She studied English and Spanish with ambitions to work as an interpreter, a career she set aside to work on her mother's farm before her husband entered politics in 2017.

Her testimony was cut short when the jury adjourned early; she was expected to resume on the stand Wednesday.