Samson, who was arrested after the judge’s hearing, was allegedly responsible for receiving the shipment from Rémy Lindor, a United States resident.
The case became a media scandal when customs authorities confiscated around 20,000 cartridges of various calibers, a hundred battery chargers and twenty automatic weapons in the capital’s port in July last year.
The shipment was said to be destined for the Episcopal Church, which denied any connection to the goods.
However, several people associated with the religious institution were arrested over the files, including Father Frantz Cole, who served as the diocesan executive secretary and priest-in-charge for the parish of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Bolosse.
Authorities also arrested accountant Jean Gilles Jean Mary, who between 2017 and 2021 signed several documents authorizing the “seizure” of funds from the Episcopal Church account to the account of an international trafficker actively wanted by police.
In 2022, customs agents seized other shipments of arms and ammunition at the country’s ports, most of them from the United States, amid escalating violence by criminal groups that has left more than 1,400 dead and 155,000 displaced.
jha/ane