HAITI — Martine Moïse, the wife of Haiti’s assassinated president who was injured in the July 7 attack at their private home, returned to Port-Au-Prince, the Caribbean nation’s capital, on Saturday following her release from the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida.
Mrs. Moïse, 47, was critically wounded during the fatal attack on her husband where she suffered gunshot wounds to her arm and thighs.
She returned on a private jet on Saturday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. with two security contractors. Her return was unannounced and surprising to the country of more than 11 million people who are still mourning the nighttime assassination of their president.
Authorities said that the assassination involved Haitians, Haitian-Americans and former Colombian soldiers.
Mrs. Moïse disembarked the flight at the Port-Au-Prince airport wearing a black dress, a black face mask, a black bulletproof jacket and her right arm in a black sling as she slowly walked down the steps of the airplane.
A small delegation including Haiti’s Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph greeted Mrs. Moïse at the airport where she left in what appeared to be a well planned exit with security around her.
Earlier this week, Mrs. Moïse tweeted from the hospital that she could not believe her husband was gone “without saying a last word,” she wrote. “This pain will never pass.”
She also thanked the “guardian angels” at the Jackson Memorial Hospital who took care of her. “With your gentle touch, kindness and care, I was able to hold on. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” she wrote.
On Friday, government officials announced that Jovenel Moïse’s funeral will held on July 23, 2021 in the northern Haitian city of Cap Haitian and that his wife is expected to attend.
She arrived hours after a key group of international diplomats on Saturday appeared to have thrown their support behind Ariel Henry who the late president had designated as prime minister a day before his assassination. Moïse had named Henry as Joseph’s replacement, though Joseph has said “Henry was never sworn in, making the appointment invalid.”
Joseph has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military despite the fact that Moïse had announced his replacement a day before he was assassinated.
The group called for the creation of “a consensual and inclusive government” stating that, “it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government.”
