NEW YORK (AP) — Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Iván Duque said Wednes­day there is ev­i­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny that se­ri­ous­ly im­pli­cate “prac­ti­cal­ly all” of the for­mer Colom­bian sol­diers be­ing held in Haiti in the as­sas­si­na­tion of that coun­try’s pres­i­dent, Jovenel Moïse.

In an in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, Duque said the ar­rest­ed ex-sol­diers still need to be tried, but that “clear­ly, based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of many,” it is ev­i­dent “that there is a lev­el of im­pli­ca­tion” in the Ju­ly 7 killing of Moïse, who was as­sas­si­nat­ed at his home in Haiti’s cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince.

More than 40 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed in Haiti in con­nec­tion with the killing, in­clud­ing sev­er­al Hait­ian po­lice of­fi­cers, a for­mer Hait­ian sen­a­tor and 18 for­mer Colom­bian sol­diers.

Duque struck a harsh­er tone than in the past re­gard­ing the Colom­bians held in Haiti since short­ly af­ter the killing. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he had said a small group of re­cruiters knew what the re­al in­ten­tion of the ex-sol­diers’ trip to Haiti was and they mis­rep­re­sent­ed the goal of the mis­sion to the for­mer sol­diers.

The pres­i­dent told AP on Wednes­day that he nev­er said the for­mer sol­diers were mis­led.

“I have al­ways said that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has to be car­ried out, and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been done, and in fact the Colom­bian po­lice con­tributed,” he said. “And in fact, one of the peo­ple who fled from Haiti, who was lat­er cap­tured, talked about the lev­el of in­volve­ment.”

Duque seemed to be re­fer­ring to Mario An­to­nio José Pala­cios, iden­ti­fied as one of the main sus­pects in Moïse’s mur­der. He is de­tained in Flori­da. Ac­cord­ing to the ac­cu­sa­tions, Pala­cios spoke vol­un­tar­i­ly and said he was hired to trav­el to Haiti to of­fer se­cu­ri­ty and par­tic­i­pate in a pur­port­ed op­er­a­tion to ar­rest the pres­i­dent.

Fam­i­lies of the ex-sol­diers have com­plained that the de­tainees have not been able to de­fend them­selves in Haiti and do not have lawyers.

In Ju­ly, Duque said that “with­in the group (of for­mer sol­diers) there were peo­ple who had re­ceived dif­fer­ent in­struc­tions.” Even so, the pres­i­dent point­ed out that “re­gard­less of the lev­el of knowl­edge one had,” it was clear the en­tire group par­tic­i­pat­ed in the as­sas­si­na­tion.

That same month he al­so told a ra­dio sta­tion that “every­thing in­di­cates a large group of peo­ple who ar­rived in Haiti were ‘blind­fold­ed,’ tak­en for a sup­posed pro­tec­tion mis­sion, while oth­ers, a small group ap­par­ent­ly, had de­tailed knowl­edge of the crim­i­nal op­er­a­tion and the in­tent to kill the pres­i­dent of Haiti.”

On Wednes­day, Duque said Colom­bia’s hands are tied in the ju­di­cial process in Haiti.

“We can try to work diplo­mat­i­cal­ly to guar­an­tee that the tri­al be car­ried out ear­li­er and that they have a min­i­mum of con­di­tions as in­mates. But be­yond that, Colom­bia can­not act, be­cause clear­ly there are some facts. There are some ac­cu­sa­tions. There are some tes­ti­monies,” the pres­i­dent said.

Duque, a con­ser­v­a­tive who can­not seek re-elec­tion in Colom­bia’s May 29 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. al­so spoke about the so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in neigh­bor­ing Venezuela.

In 2019, Duque said that Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion “had very few hours left.” On Wednes­day he ac­knowl­edged re­ceiv­ing crit­i­cism for mak­ing that com­ment.

“Maybe, if you look at it in hind­sight, maybe if I looked at it with a self-crit­i­cal sense, I would say, well, I shouldn’t have done it,” Duque said. “But what I can say clear­ly is that, thank God, we raised our voice. Thank God, more than 50 coun­tries re­ject that dic­ta­tor­ship.”

“Many peo­ple say, well, but then you are go­ing to end your gov­ern­ment in Au­gust and Maduro will con­tin­ue to be the dic­ta­tor of Venezuela. Per­haps. But I am not go­ing to stop work­ing a sin­gle day in my life for the free­dom of Venezuela, be­cause the free­dom of Venezuela is al­so the pro­tec­tion of Colom­bia,” Duque added.