Haiti Authorities Intensify Manhunt After President’s Assassination

“I am asking that the population hand over anyone they capture to the police because, if not, we won’t know what really happened,” the prime minister said. “We need to understand the motives of these people. We can’t let this action go unpunished.”

The assassination at about 1 a.m. Wednesday was carried out at the president’s residence with precision, an investigator in charge of the crime scene told The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Moïse’s guards, the housekeeper and butler were tied up. The killers then shot the president 12 times with high-caliber bullets, with one shot directly in his forehead, the investigator said. His eye had also been gouged out.

Mr. Joseph said that justice would be delivered to the Moïse family, including the late president’s wife, Martine, who was wounded in the attack and airlifted to Miami for treatment.

Mr. Joseph tried to calm the country of 11 million, which in recent months had been whipsawed by violence among gangs that people familiar with the country’s politics say are tied to power brokers in politics and business.

Haitian police on Thursday captured two men who they said are among the suspects, with live images shared on social media showing a crowd manhandling them in a Port-au-Prince slum.

The men—one of them shirtless, bloodied, and his arms bound by rope—were shown being led through the streets by young men, one of them yelling, “Move, move!” Police intervened and took the men from the crowd. By late Thursday, the government on live TV displayed a group of detained suspects—some appearing battered—on the ground surrounded by security forces.

Among those detained were two suspects believed to be American, a spokesman for the prime minister said.

“The goal is to find who killed the president, especially the intellectual authors,” Police Chief Leon Charles said.

Ned Price, a State Department spokesman, said the U.S. government was aware of media reports of U.S. citizens among those arrested, but declined to give more information, deferring to Haitian officials.

Mr. Charles added that five vehicles used in connection with the attack had been seized, though Haitians had torched three of them. He said weaponry and other material had also been confiscated.

The call for citizens to nab the foreigners who participated—government officials have said some of them spoke Spanish or English—raised concerns that innocent people could be beaten by mobs.

“Today, the fear is that Haitian citizens attack any Spanish-speaking person they meet in the street,” said Marie Rosy Auguste, a human rights activist in Port-au-Prince. “The risk of human-rights violations against Spanish-speaking people is very high.”

The United Nations special envoy for Haiti, Helen La Lime, said Mr. Joseph had informed her that he would stay on as prime minister ahead of a first round of elections in September for Haiti’s parliament and president.

She said people needed to “set aside their differences and to chart a common way forward and overcome this difficult moment in a peaceful manner.”

Speaking after she had briefed the U.N. Security Council, Ms. La Lime said Haiti had requested security aid but needed to specify exactly what kind of assistance the country wants.

Some residents blame the late Mr. Moïse for much of the gang violence that has plagued Haiti since he became president. Violence had escalated in recent weeks as Mr. Moïse, who was elected in 2016 but couldn’t take office for another year because of unrest, refused to leave office in February when opponents argued that his term had ended.

Gangs have almost total control, said Gedeon Jean, a lawyer who heads the Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research, a Haiti-based organization that tracks the country’s politics.

In Haiti, though, power brokers finance gangs to counter their political and business rivals, say people knowledgeable about the country’s gang structure.

“We cannot say that the gangs assassinated the president,” said Mr. Jean. “However, the gangs are becoming very powerful and are becoming a revolutionary force.”

Pierre Esperance, the director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network, believes that Haiti’s criminal gangs control as much as 60% of the country’s territory. Their power is a real danger to the country’s already frayed democracy. “There is no way to have a free election in Haiti now because of gang control,” he said.

A key reason, residents said, is fear of being killed or kidnapped. In June, 150 people were slain and nearly 200 abductions took place, Mr. Jean said.

Mr. Esperance, who works to investigate killings in a country where they often don’t get solved, blames gangs allied with the government for killing at least 437 people and disappearing another 129.

A spokesman for Mr. Joseph didn’t return calls seeking comment. Senior officials of Mr. Moïse’s administration have denied any links with gangs.

One gang leader, Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer, who last year became the leader of the G9 Alliance of gangs, which human-rights activists say was aligned with the government, demanded in a recent video that Mr. Moïse resign. Mr. Cherizier made his demand as gang members, their faces hidden by balaclavas, waved machetes in the air.

The U.S. Treasury in 2020 sanctioned two senior Haitian officials in Mr. Moïse’s administration for allegedly planning, along with Mr. Cherizier, the 2018 La Saline massacre in which assailants killed 71 people and torched 400 homes. The gang members took the victims, including children, from their homes and executed them in the street. The bodies were later burned, dismembered and fed to animals, the U.S. Treasury said

The two officials provided police uniforms, guns and vehicles to the perpetrators, the U.S. said.

From the days of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, the dictator who ran Haiti from 1957 to 1971, Haitian presidents and dictators have relied on shadowy security forces to stay in power. Mr. Moïse was no different, said Luis Moreno, a former acting U.S. ambassador to Haiti.

“He quickly found that he had to forge alliances with them,” said Mr. Moreno. “They rule the streets.”

Facing a deepening political crisis, Haiti could tip from its usual chaos into total anarchy, he said.

—José de Córdoba and Kejal Vyas contributed to this article.

Write to Juan Forero at [email protected] and Juan Montes at [email protected]

Corrections & Amplifications

Gedeon Jean is a lawyer who heads the Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to him as Mr. Gedeon instead of Mr. Jean. (Corrected on July 8, 2021.)