A former senator and the acting mayor of a small Haiti town have been charged in the death of a journalist whose 2019 killing, amid the country’s deepening political crisis, sparked protests and calls for an investigation after he became the third journalist in the country killed in less than two years.

A popular radio host of a sociopolitical talk show, Néhémie Joseph worked for both Radio Panic FM in Haiti and Miami-based Radio Mega when his bullet-riddled body was found stuffed inside the trunk of his car parked at the entrance of the city of Mirebalais in Haiti’s Central Plateau region.

Rony Célestin, a former senator who represented the farming region, and Lochard Laguere, who still serves as mayor of Mirebalais despite the end of his official term, are being ordered to stand trial before a jury. The investigative judge in the case wants them arrested, accusing them of being some of the masterminds of the slaying.

In a March 8 order that was only recently made public, Judge Edwige Dorsainvil of the Mirebalais Court of First Instance ruled there’s sufficient evidence to charge the two men and six others in the journalist’s assassination.

Under Haitian law, all of those accused have the right to appeal the charges.

Dorsainvil’s years-long investigation also concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Yolette Jeanty, the mother one of the charged suspects , or well-known radio commentator Garry Pierre Paul Charles, in the killing. Charles and Joseph had a tense conversation about 48 hours before the journalist’s body was found. The order said no link was found between Charles and the others charged in the killing.

On Tuesday, a leading human rights group in Haiti, the Eyes Wide Open/La Fondasyon Je Klere welcomed the charges and called for the justice system to do its part, following the work of the investigative judge, who functions like a grand jury in the United States. Haiti ranks among the world’s third-worst offenders on the list of countries where the murders of journalists go unpunished, behind Syria and Somalia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2023 Impunity Index.

The Eyes Wide Open foundation “appreciates the effort made by the Mirebalais justice system to achieve this order, which represents a hope of seeing justice one day put an end to the impunity enjoyed by murderers in this country,” the group said.

The investigation lays out a sordid entanglement involving romantic relationships, betrayal and political machinations unfolding in a quiet rural town where Célestin, one of the country’s most powerful lawmakers and a close collaborator of President Jovenel Moïse, also lived.

Attempts by the Miami Herald to reach Célestin by email and phone were unsuccessful.

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