Funeral of the late Haitian President Moise got underway on Friday, two weeks after he was shot dead at home in an assassination still shrouded in mystery.
Pall bearers placed the polished casket on a dais garlanded with flowers while a Roman Catholic priest blessed the coffin and a Haitian flag was unfurled.
Foreign dignitaries including U.S. President Joe Biden’s top advisor for the Western Hemisphere flew to Cap-Haitien to pay their respects to Moise, joining mourners in a series of commemorations in Haiti this week.
Moise was gunned down in his home in Port-au-Prince before dawn on July 7, setting off a political crisis in the Caribbean country already struggling with poverty and lawlessness.
Protests by angry supporters of Moise convulsed the slain leader’s hometown, the northern city of Cap-Haitien, for a second successive day on Thursday as workers labored in preparation for the funeral.
The protesters set tires on fire to block roads on Thursday afternoon, while workers paved a brick road to Moise’s mausoleum on a dusty plot of several acres enclosed by high walls.
Set on land held by Moise’s family and where he lived as a boy, the partly built tomb stood in the shade of fruit trees, just a few steps from a mausoleum for Moise’s father, who died last year. Police controlled access to the compound through a single gate.
Screens inside an auditorium broadcast images of the late statesman and his meetings with world leaders including Pope Francis, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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