CNN Exclusive: Port-au-Prince, Haiti — The smell of raw sewage and food waste permeates the air in the entrance to Haiti’s National Penitentiary in downtown Port-au-Prince.
Its source is the exposed pipe that visitors must walk over as a liquid mix slides through to the street.
A pat-down of even our heads from quiet security guards follows and then a large metal door swings open, revealing a courtyard on the other side.
Haitian authorities call these men assassins. They call themselves innocent.
“We were useful idiots for someone else,” one of the men told us. “But we did not commit this crime.” More than five months detained after that deadly night, the men have not been formally charged.
Above, the scene outside the National Penitentiary where family members bring food for prisoners inside.
CNN was allowed to enter the penitentiary after months of negotiation, with only paper and a pen, and told to wait in a wooden hut in the prison courtyard. Twenty minutes later, five Colombian men clearly not expecting our visit walked toward us in shorts, t-shirts and dark blue croc-style sandals, looking gaunt and unhealthy.
Their message was consistent over an hour-long conversation in their native Spanish — they are innocent, they have been tortured and they have been set-up.
Afraid to talk
All five men said they arrived in Haiti in June, about a month before the assassination that would upturn their lives and throw the country’s political landscape into chaos.
Promised anywhere from $2,700-3,000 a month, they took on the job. According to the five men CNN spoke to and the wives of several others, they were never paid a dime.
CTU has not…
Source : cnn
