Turkey frees Palestinian man in Haiti assassination saga

A Palestinian man held in Turkey for his alleged role in the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise was allowed to fly home to the United States on Aug. 3, ending a nine-month legal saga that saw the rejection of his extradition to Haiti in what has become a complex, international manhunt for the assassins. 

Samir Handal, a businessman who holds Palestinian, Jordanian and Haitian citizenships as well as a Green Card that has allowed him to live in the United States for 22 years, remained behind bars in Turkey even after Interpol suspended a red notice for his arrest earlier this year. In a further twist, a bureaucratic muddle kept the 64-year-old from leaving Turkey after an Istanbul court rejected Haiti’s extradition request in early July. 

Handal denies any role in Moise’s assassination. In an interview with Al-Monitor, his lawyer in Turkey, Mahmut Barlas, said Handal was denied presumption of innocence, detained wrongfully, and suffered moral and material harm in an unlawful process behind which, he believes, were political decisions devoid of legal basis.

Handal’s ordeal began about nine months ago as he boarded a flight from Miami to Istanbul on his way to Palestine to visit his mother. According to Barlas, Interpol, heeding Haiti’s request, issued the red notice shortly after Handal’s plane took off on Nov. 14, 2021. After landing in Istanbul, he was put in jail on a temporary custody order. Haiti’s extradition request implicating Handal in Moise’s assassination arrived just a day before the 40-day legal period was to expire. Haiti’s allegations were hastily turned into an indictment, after which Handal was transferred to a high-security prison in Ankara.