A senior Haitian police official was shopping at his local supermarket on a recent weekday when someone caught his eye: the country’s most wanted man.
The official, Ernst Dorfeuille, recognized Joseph Félix Badio, a former military officer who had focused on drug and corruption cases at the interior and justice ministries, immediately because he had once worked with him.
Now Mr. Badio was a fugitive, the target of a warrant seeking to question him about the key role the police say he played in an infamous crime: the assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, in July 2021.
Mr. Dorfeuille summoned help, and within minutes, four police officers armed with assault rifles arrived and detained Mr. Badio as he was about to drive away from the supermarket outside Haiti’s capital.