Miami man arrested in Turkey had no links to assassination of Haiti's president, family says

A Miami man arrested Monday in Turkey on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of Haiti’s president in July, was on his way to visit his sick mother in the holy city of Bethlehem, his family says.

The Haitian-Palestinian businessman, Samir Handal, was arrested in Istanbul on Monday after arriving on a plane from Miami. Video shows him being escorted by immigration officials after he attempted to go through port control area.

His family say they only learned of his detention on social media and have had no word of him since.

Handal, 63, is wanted by Haitian authorities in connection to the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July, after he was identified as the owner of a house rented by one of accused plotters. But Handal’s family says that’s as far as his connection to the murder plot goes.

"It's absurd"

“He’s innocent, he’s not implicated,” his daughter, Samar Handal, told Univision. Far from being a fugitive, his family and their lawyer told Univision that Handal was on his way to visit his 85-year-old mother in Bethlehem whom he had not seen in more than two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s absurd. They say he is some kind of mastermind of the assassination. But all he did was rent a house to someone he didn’t even know,” his daughter said. “He’s being framed,” she added, referring to wild rumors on social media.

The family provided Univision with an official Palestinian document testifying to the health of Handal's mother, which described a serious heart condition and nerve damage to her legs from diabetes.

44 arrests

Haitian officials have arrested 44 suspects in the assassination, some of them Colombians former soldiers who assaulted the president’s residence on the night he was killed, as well as of the presidential security guard, local police. But several of the ringleaders are still fugitives and it remains unclear who were the intellectual authors of the crime.

Among those arrested in jail are three Haitian-Americans, including a Florida pastor, Christian Sanon, who had rented the house from Handal.

A lawyer for Handal in Haiti said the three-month contract was for less than $1,000 a month, and that Handal had no other dealings with Sanon.

Scapegoat

“That’s it. That’s all he is accused of,” said the family’s lawyer, Sibylle Théard Mevs, who said she provided a copy of the rental agreement to Haitian authorities and has been in regular communication with police and the Justice Ministry there. “The whole thing is utterly incomprehensible. It looks as though they just want to make him into a convenient scapegoat because he is a wealthy Palestinian immigrant,” she added.

A detailed police report of the investigation into the assassination obtained by Univision contains no other information implicating Handal, other than the rental agreement.

Interpol

Handal’s arrest came after Haiti’s Foreign Minister, Claude Joseph, ed Turkish officials after being
alerted about Handal’s travel plans and activating an Interpol Red Notice, issued for wanted fugitives, The Miami Herald reported.

Joseph apparently asked the Turkish government to extradite Handal to Haiti to answer questions about the assassination.

But Handal’s family say he was never a fugitive and has been in regular with U.S. and Haitian authorities.

Samar Handal, a 40-year-old Miami DJ, told Univision the family has had no with her father since his arrest and they are worried about his health as he suffers from epilepsy and has a bad back and vascular issues in his legs.

Jail conditions

She added she was terrified by the thought of her father being extradited and jailed in Haiti, especially after the death Wednesday of one of the jailed suspects in the Moise assassination, Gilbert Dragon. The former police officer was battling Covid-19 for two weeks in his jail cell, but was denied proper medical treatment for two weeks, his wife told reporters in Haiti.

Handal, who has dual Haitian and Palestinian citizenship, was born in Bethlehem and moved to Haiti aged 22. He lives in Miami with his wife and children who are American citizens, and travels back and forth to Haiti where he has business interests, mostly in real estate. The family currently rents a building rented to the Haitian government’s Ministry of Planning.

Interviewed by FBI

He left Haiti two days after the killing and was interviewed by the FBI in Miami a week later. He turned over his cellphone for the FBI to examine, his daughter said.

“My dad was not in hiding. The authorities have known where he is all along,” she said.

Handal notified the Miami FBI office before traveling to Turkey, en route to Bethlehem.

The FBI is assisting Haiti in the assassination investigation, including Sanon’s links to a security firm in Miami, CTU Federal Academy, that hired the Colombian former soldiers. As is normal in ongoing investigations, the FBI Miami office has declined to discuss the Haiti assassination.

Friends of the family questioned the role of the foreign minister in the arrest of Handal, noting that he was himself implicated after he was alleged to have met with some of the suspects. Joseph has strongly denied any link to the plot. Haiti’s current prime minister, Ariel Henry, has also been linked to one of the suspects, Joseph Badio, who is a fugitive. Henry has itted to receiving two phone calls from Badio moments after the assassination, though he says he says he doesn’t recall what they talked about.

Haitian police have accused Sanon of being one of the intellectual authors of the assassination. Sanon, who was largely unknown in Haiti before the assassination, traveled to Haiti earlier this year with a Colombian security team, ostensibly with a plans for a major development project. He also harbored political ambitions and organized meetings with government critics.

Handal’s family say he never attended any of the meetings and he had no interest in politics.

Fear of politics

A friend of the Handal family told Univision that he was the last person he would imagine getting involved in any kind of political controversy.

“Samir is a very kind, respectful person,” said Haitian-American businessman, George Saati, an outspoken critic of Haitian, and U.S. politics, who lives in Miami. “He refused categorically to talk about politics, whether it’s domestic or international. He’s a man trying to lead a very conformist life,” he added.

Samar Handal the reason for that was because her mother is related to the Izméry family, also of Palestinian ancestry, who suffered violent reprisals for their political activity in the 1990s.

“My grandmother is an Izméry,” she said, describing how the brothers, Georges and Antoine Izméry, were assassinated in 1992 and 1993 in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, after they spoke out against a military coup that ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

“That just marked us. When something like that happens, it hits close to home. After that, we knew never to get involved in politics,” she said.