U.S. authorities have arrested a Colombian national suspected of a role in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Mo？se last year, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

       Mario Antonio Palacios, 43, was detained during a layover in Panama and transported to the United States, the statement said. He remains in custody and appeared Tuesday in a U.S. district court in Miami.

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       A criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida and unsealed Tuesday accuses Palacios, a former Colombian military officer, of conspiring to commit murder or kidnapping outside the United States as part of a plot to abduct or kill Mo？se in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, in July.

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       The Justice Department said Palacios was part of a group of Colombian citizens and dual Haitian Americans who entered Mo？se’s home wielding assault weapons with the intent to kill him. Palacios faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. He is the first to face U.S. prosecution in Mo？se’s killing.

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       In court on Tuesday, he spoke in Spanish and said via an interpreter that he does not know anyone in the United States and that his only income is a monthly Colombian military pension worth about $375, Reuters reported.

       It was unclear whether Palacios was one of the former Colombian servicemen alleged to have participated in the assassination who had received training by the U.S. military. The Pentagon has said that a small number of Colombians detained as part of the investigation had participated in past U.S. military training and education programs as active members of Colombia’s armed forces.

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       The brazen assassination of Mo？se came as Haiti grappled with a surge in political and gang-related violence, plunging the impoverished Caribbean nation of 11 million into further instability.

       Since then, Haiti’s domestic investigation into the assassination has been mired in chaos, with some accusing authorities of using the probe to crack down on political opponents rather than prosecute Mo？se’s killers.

       Dozens of people have been arrested in Haiti in the case, but none have been charged.