Haiti assassination: Officials probing president's murder reveal death threats

Haiti assassination: Officials probing president's murder reveal death threats
Haiti assassination: Officials probing president's murder reveal death threats

It is a tale that seems to be plucked from the pages of a crime thriller: A president gunned down in his bedroom in the dead of night by a highly-trained hit squad on the orders of an unidentified mastermind. 

But as investigators try to uncover the truth of what happened in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on the morning of July 7, the story that emerges is stranger than even the best-written whodunnit.

Judges and their clerks say they have been receiving highly-specific death threats - calls and texts delivered while they are at crime scenes telling them to 'get ready for a bullet in your head' and 'I know your every move'.

They add that key evidence has either disappeared, been destroyed, or they have been blocked from accessing it as fears grow that the probe is being hampered from within - though nobody is willing to point fingers.

Meanwhile key questions about the raid that killed President Jovenel Moise and badly wounded his wife Martine remain unanswered, almost three weeks on - most pressingly: Who wanted him dead, and why? 

Carl Henry Destin, an investigating judge who was first to arrive at the scene of Moise's shooting after police, has bee in hiding for more than two weeks after getting death threats

Carl Henry Destin, an investigating judge who was first to arrive at the scene of Moise's shooting after police, has bee in hiding for more than two weeks after getting death threats

Disturbing new details about the investigation have been revealed by CNN and contained within a trove of documents put together by judges who - under Haiti's legal system - are charged with investigating crimes and gathering evidence.

The documents detail death threats that have been sent to the judges and their clerks, warning them to stop their investigations, change testimony, or insert names into reports that form the official body of evidence.

In one incident, clerk Marcelin Valentin reported getting a threatening phone call on July 9 while on a crime scene inspecting the corpses of two prime suspects.

According to CNN, the caller demanded information about the investigation and threatened Valentin with death if he refused to add certain names to his report or to modify witness statements.

A week later, Valentin received a text message saying 'I see your every move' while again threatening him, this time to remove names from his reports.

Carl Henry Destin, an investigating judge who was first at the scene of Moise's murder after the police had arrived, said he is in hiding because similar threats have been sent to him and his clerks.

Destin also spoke of barriers to his investigation that go beyond death threats - evidence that he claims he has been blocked from seeing, witnesses he has not been allowed to interview, and crime scenes that have been tampered with.

He recalled being summoned to Moise's home on the night of the shooting around 1am, but was told to wait outside for almost nine hours before finally being allowed in to gather evidence and start his investigation.

Investigating judges say police have blocked them from viewing CCTV from Moise's presidential palace and from interviewing suspects (pictured, police chief Leon Charles)

Investigating judges say police have blocked them from viewing CCTV from Moise's presidential palace and from interviewing suspects (pictured, police chief Leon Charles)

Investigators say bodies had been moved and suspects' vehicle burned at once crime scene they were called to (file image, police forced to flee a demonstration by Moise's supporters)

Investigators say bodies had been moved and suspects' vehicle burned at once crime scene they were called to (file image, police forced to flee a demonstration by Moise's supporters)

Once inside, Destin said that anybody who might have actually witnessed the shooting - such as Moise's presidential guards - were long gone.

To this day, he claims, he has only

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