Defendant in Haiti president’s killing is in custody in Canada awaiting extradition

One of the newly indicted defendants in the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse is in custody in Canada, where he is being held pending extradition to the United States. Ashkard Pierre, who once worked in the Haitian consulate in Montreal, was arrested over the weekend as part of the sweeping expansion of the United States prosecution stemming from the assassination. A federal grand jury returned a sixth superseding indictment on Aug. 27, charging Pierre and 25 other named defendants while leaving the identities of four others under seal. The previous indictment had named just five defendants, four of whom were convicted earlier this year of conspiracy to kidnap or kill Moïse, who was shot to death inside his house in the middle of the night on July 7, 2021. While many of the newly charged defendants are in U.S. custody in Miami, where parts of the plot were hatched, Pierre remains in Canada following his arrest over the weekend by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in collaboration with the FBI in Montreal. The French-language digital news media outlet La Presse reported Wednesday that court documents filed in Montreal showed that Canadian police had been monitoring Pierre for weeks and had placed his home under surveillance.

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