Prime Minister Ariel Henry should be “forbidden from leaving the national territory by air, sea or road due to serious presumption relative to the assassination of the president,” the country's Prosecutor wrote in a letter to the country’s Migration Services.

Haiti’s chief public prosecutor has asked the judge overseeing the investigation into the assassination of President Jovenel Moise to charge Prime Minister Ariel Henry as a suspect and ordered migration services not to let him leave the country.

In a letter to Judge Garry Orelien, prosecutor Mr. Bed-Ford Claude said phone records showed Henry twice communicated with a key suspect in Moise’s killing on the night of the crime on July 7.



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Mr. Claude said the calls were made at 4:03 a.m. and 4:20 a.m. on July 7, adding that evidence shows the suspect, Joseph Badio, was in the vicinity of Moïse’s home at that time. Badio once worked for Haiti’s Ministry of Justice and at the government’s anti-corruption unit until he was fired in May amid accusations of violating unspecified ethical rules.

In the two-page document, Claude said the calls lasted a total of seven minutes and that Henry was at the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince at the time. He also noted that a government official tweeted last month that Henry told him he never spoke with Badio.

That suspect, a former justice ministry official whom Henry has publicly defended, is now on the run.


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Mr. Chenald Augustin, who works in the prime minister’s communications office, said it did not have an immediate comment. The premier last week dismissed the charges against him as politicking.

President Moise was shot dead when assassins stormed his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince, plunging the impoverished Caribbean country deeper into turmoil and a political vacuum.

Haiti’s Office of Citizen Protection demanded on Tuesday Mr. Henry step down and hand himself over to the justice system.

Prime Minister Henry retorted on Twitter that no distraction, invitation, summons, maneuver, menace or rearguard action would distract him from his work.