A key suspect in the July 7, 2021, assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was flown out of Haiti to Miami on Sunday by U.S. authorities, along with a group of jailed Colombian commandos accused of taking part in the brutal killing.

A U.S. military aircraft arrived on the tarmac at Port-au-Prince’s international airport shortly before 11 a.m., and several people familiar with the operation told the Miami Herald that it was there to pick up Joseph Félix Badio, a former government functionary indicted in Haiti in connection with the assassination, as well as the 17 Colombian former soldiers accused of taking part in the killing.

In addition to 18 defendants transferred from Haiti, another 11 have been newly indicted in connection with the assassination. The FBI has arrested about a half dozen of them, including Samir Handal in Miami. Handal provided food and housing to Christian Emmanuel Sanon, the Haitian American pastor and South Florida resident who is facing trial next week on charges of plotting to kill Moïse.

About half of the new people indicted, including Hamdal, are charged with the main conspiracy. The others are facing charges of government loan fraud in using unlawfully obtained COVID-19 funds to help pay for the plot. The group will have its first appearance in federal court in Miami at 10 a.m. before Magistrate Judge Lisette Reid, who is expected to appoint attorneys for the vast majority of the defendants.

In May, a team of federal prosecutors, led by Asst. U.S. Attorney Sean McLaughlin, won convictions of four co-conspirators in the assassination.

Initially, there was confusion over whether Badio would be among those transferred to the U.S. on Sunday. Although he had left the prison with the 17 Colombians on Sunday morning, Haitian authorities had resisted handing him over to the U.S., given that he is a major figure in their own slow-moving investigation.

But Badio’s name soon appeared on a flight manifest obtained by the Herald, along with those of the Colombians. All 18 men, dressed in blue jumpsuits, were seen boarding the large gray military aircraft.

In a post on X, FBI Special Agent in Charge Brett Skiles referred to “multi-location and international arrests,” but did not provide any details.

“We can confirm that the FBI conducted law enforcement activity in Haiti, Canada, and multiple locations in South Florida,” spokesman Willie Creech said. “Because this is an ongoing investigation, no further information is available at this time.”

Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, also confirmed the transfer, though he did not identify the suspects. In a social media posting, he said “18 transported in military plane from Haiti to face American justice in the Southern District of Florida.

“Today marks the next major phase in our pursuit of accountability for the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse,” Quiñones said on his post. “Our work did not end with the men who planned and carried out this assassination. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, to those who financed, facilitated it, supported it, or committed crimes to make it possible.

“Five years later we are still bringing defendants before American courts,” he added, “and we are not finished.”

So far 30 people have been indicted in the U.S. for their involvement in the killing, Quiñones said.

After declining to confirm the transfer before the aircraft left Haitian airspace, Haiti’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security issued a statement saying the government had turned over the men to U.S. authorities as part of an effort to establish the facts surrounding the assassination and identify those responsible.

“In effect, in the interest of bringing to an end the judicial proceedings related to the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, the Haitian government has decided to strengthen cooperation with the American judicial authorities,” the ministry said.

The sprawling conspiracy, which stretched from South Florida to Colombia and Haiti, had led to parallel investigations in Haiti and the U.S., the ministry added.

“While the American procedure has registered significant advances, notably arrests, prosecutions and convictions, the Haitian procedure remains confronted with important difficulties and has not, to date, led to the holding of a trial, after five years of procedure,” the ministry said.

In 2024, a Haiti investigative judge, Walther Wesser Voltaire, indicted 51 people, including the late president’s widow. His 122-page indictment, which named Badio and the Colombians among others, spelled out a power grab that also involved people in the president’s circle. However, those named appealed the indictment and an appeals panel ruled that the inquiry was incomplete.

The ministry noted that while the Haiti case remains unresolved, several people detained in the Caribbean country were also the subject of U.S. indictments or arrests warrants. Evidence likely to be collected through the cooperation with federal authorities in the U.S., the ministry added, “could also contribute to the deepening of the investigations in Haiti, in accordance with the mechanisms provided in the matter of criminal cooperation.”

Whether that cooperation happens and ultimately benefits Haiti’s investigation remains an open question.

After Haiti turned over the first group of suspects, U.S. investigators promised Haitian officials that they would have access to them. But the access was never granted. The federal conspiracy charges also carry the possibility of life in prison, further raising questions about whether defendants convicted in the U.S. would ever return to Haiti to stand trial.

Haitian legal experts also dispute the government’s characterization of the transfers as extraditions. The U.S. and Haiti do not have a formal treaty. Instead, the countries have a longstanding mutual legal assistance agreement that was signed over a century ago during a U.S. occupation, and gets periodically contested.

Second Miami federal trial to start

In South Florida, lawyers involved in the federal prosecution said they had not been made aware of Sunday’s transfer in advance. One defense attorney, however, noted that the high-profile case in Miami federal court was recently placed under seal, an indication that new charges or defendants had been added.

The transfer of Badio and the Colombians comes days before Sanon is scheduled to go on trial on Sept. 28 before U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra. Before Sunday, Sanon, who is also a doctor, was the last major defendant already in U.S. custody awaiting trial in the case.

Sanon, 67, was indicted with several others, including four South Florida men who were convicted earlier this year on conspiracy charges stemming from the plot to kidnap and kill the president. Sanon also faces lesser charges related to the shipment of bullet-proof vests to Haiti for the Colombians in violation of U.S. export laws, and plotting a military expedition against a friendly nation, a violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act. His trial, which is expected to last six to eight weeks, was delayed because of health issues.

READ MORE: Who was involved in killing of Haiti president Jovenel Moise?

During the trial of the four men — including the owners of a Doral-area security firms, Counter Terrorist Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security, that hired the Colombian commandos to go to Haiti — Badio’s name was repeatedly raised in testimony and evidence presented by both the defense and prosecutors. Text messages and testimony from cooperating witnesses introduced over the course of the trial’s 39 days showed him playing a pivotal role as the plot evolved from plans to kidnap Moïse and remove him from power into an assassination.

Rather than backing Sanon, Badio supported another candidate, Haitian Superior Court Justice Windelle Coq Thélot, who later died while in hiding.

Several defendants who pleaded guilty in the case and were at a mountaintop house on the night the Colombian commandos stormed Moïse’s private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince testified about Badio’s presence. One witness said Badio gave the signal for the group to leave the house where they were staying and head down the mountain toward Moïse’s home.

Witnesses also testified that Badio provided weapons to some of the Colombians and told them that Moïse kept a suitcase containing cash and two high-powered rifles in his second-floor bedroom.

Sunday’s unexpected transfer

Sunday’s unexpected transfer comes three years after Haitian police arrested Badio, and weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Colombia to meet with the South American nation’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella.

Badio was arrested by Haitian police in October 2023 after he was spotted inside a Pétion-Ville supermarket, ending more than two years in hiding. He has maintained his innocence and has indicated that he has information about the assassination.

A U.S. permanent resident, Badio had a home in New York. During the earlier federal trial, it was noted that the mortgage on his house was paid off after the presidential killing.

The Colombians locked up in Haiti have also maintained their innocence, and said they were set up. Their transfer after years by resisting efforts to be extradited to the U.S. and relatives lobbying the Colombian government to have them sent home immediately raises questions about what will happen next.

Three of the Colombians transferred to Miami were members of the so-called Delta team, which was part of the group tasked with going into Moïse’s room. Their names repeatedly came up during the trial. Moïse’s widow, Martine Moïse, singled out Victor Alberio Pineda Cardona, who went by the nickname “Pipe.”

The extent to which each of the Colombian former soldiers knew beforehand that Moïse would be killed remains a question in the U.S. case, which has focused on the plot in South Florida and how the co-conspirators were planning to replace Moïse with their own handpicked candidate.

The group had hired the Colombian team through CTU to provide security to Sanon. While that connects the Colombians to the South Florida group, there was no evidence presented during the first trial that Badio attended meetings in South Florida. He did, however, attend meetings in Haiti with the South Florida plotters as well as a former senator and a businessman, who both pleaded guilty and are cooperating.

Family members stunned by transfer

News of the unexpected transfer of the former Colombian soldiers stunned their relatives, who had been preparing for the cases to move forward in Haiti and said they received no advance notice that their loved ones could instead be sent to Miami, family members contacted by the Herald said.

Milena Carmona, whose husband, retired Lt. James Carmona, is among the Colombians jailed in connection with Moïse’s assassination, said she had just shared the news with a group of relatives when mothers, wives and other family members began asking what was happening.

“We didn’t know. We didn’t know,” Carmona said. “We were supposed to be waiting for hearings” in Haiti.

Carmona said she had been preparing a response to a request from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, who had been contacted about the conditions of the men’s confinement in Port-au-Prince, when she learned about the transfer.

The prospect of facing a criminal case in the U.S. has created a new worry for families who say they have struggled for years to pay legal expenses in Haiti. Relatives said they have limited resources and had resorted to organizing bazaars, games and raffles to raise money toward the Colombians’ legal costs. They now fear they will be unable to afford private criminal defense attorneys in the United States.

“For us, obviously, it will be very difficult — very, very difficult — because our resources are absolutely scarce,” Carmona said.

The transfer also left relatives with mixed feelings after years of frustration over Haiti’s stalled proceedings. Family members had repeatedly sought intervention from the Colombian government over the detainees’ situation, but they said Sunday’s development was not the resolution they had been seeking.

“I don’t see any options,” Carmona said of the prospect of proceedings in the United States. “I’m trying to organize my thoughts. I don’t know what to think.”