Haiti’s acting prime minister, Claude Joseph, wants the United Nations to investigate the assassination on Wedneday of President Jovenel Moïse. Word of caution: Turtle Bay isn’t very good at this.

In a closed door session today, the Security Council mulled the request after the shocking murder that according to reports left Moïse’s dead body with 12 gunshot holes and a detached eye socket. Providing no significant new details into the situation, Helen La Lime, the UN Secretary General’s envoy in Haiti, expressed her hope that the assassins would soon be caught.

One of the most urgent tasks now, Ms. Le Lime told reporters after briefing the Council, is “assuring these guys are caught and brought to justice.” On that score, she added, the interim government “asked for assistance in the investigation.” Said she: “We certainly are prepared to assist.”

Thanks, surely, but from Dag Hammarskjold to Rafik Hariri and beyond, the UN’s record of investigating high profile political assassinations and other crimes is far from stellar. Hammarskjold, a Swede who was the world body’s second secretary general, perished in a plane crash on September 18, 1961, while on a mediation mission in Congo at the height of the Cold War. A UN investigation couldn’t determine the cause.

The Swedish UN chief, President Truman said at the time, “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him,” adding, “Notice that I said ‘when they killed him.’” America blamed the Soviet committee for state security, known as the KGB, while others, less credibly, tried to blame the CIA, MI6, and the Belgians.

Despite numerous twists and turns, endless speculations, leaked documents suspected of being forged, and suspect confessions, Hammarskjold’s death remains as unsolved today as it was 60 years ago. It irks the world body. As recently as 2015, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon launched a new investigation, but it hasn’t solved the case, either.

Then there’s the case of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, who in 2005 at Beirut was assassinated in a car bombing. The high-profile mudrer highlighted the Syrian occupation and the growing Lebanese resistance to it. After deliberations, the Security Council established an international tribunal to investigate and bring Hariri’s killers to justice.

Among that tribunal’s numerous reports, many detailed nothing more than how many computer printers its office purchased. At least one report was crudely edited by Secretary General Annan to remove suspicion from top Syrian officials, which savvy Middle Easterners in Lebanon and beyond had long concluded were responsible.

Twelve years after it was established, the tribunal named several low-level suspects. Yet the tribunal lacked serious subpoena powers. So their suspects were slated to be tried in absentia. Yet wheny 15 years after the assassination the tribunal announced last month it’d end its investigation for lack of funds, almost no one noticed.

Designed to deliver a headline-grabbing bang, that Security Council-mandated probe ended with barely a whimper. Or as they say at Turtle Bay, in the UN justice system, the Milosevic will always die just before his verdict arrives.

That’s a reference to Slobodan Milsoevic, the Serbian leader considered an architect of the worst atrocities in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. After years of deliberations, a UN-established tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity in that war finally delivered a belated guilty verdict against him in 2006. It came a few days after Milosevic passed away in his jail cell.

The Security Council’s Balkans tribunal, which to this day hands out verdicts against aging war criminals, had served as a blueprint for establishing the Hague-based International Criminal Court, which America, Russia, China, India, Israel, and others have refused to join.

In one high profile ICC case, the court issued an international arrest warrant against Sudan’s President al-Bashir for his role in the atrocities at Darfur. Al-Bashir ignored the warrant and traveled unabated. So did world leaders that eagerly hosted him as mere head of state. No arrest was made prior to Bashir’s death in 2019.

Yet on Thursday the usual suspects — Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, et al — issued calls for a UN-led international investigation into the assassination of Moïse. They do something like this each time a similar headline-grabbing occasion arises.

Haitians should know better. Family members of Haiti’s cholera pandemic have accused UN peacekeepers of introducing a strain of the disease to their country. They’re still awaiting their day in a New York court, where UN officials have claimed diplomatic immunity.

It bears mentioning that in the current chaotic political climate, any investigation endorsed by local powers, all backed by armed factions, would be highly suspect. So here’s an idea: rather than appeal to the United Nations, why doesn’t Haiti turn to Washington?

According to numerous reports, James Solages, one of six men arrested by Haitian police shortly after the Wednesday assassination, is an American citizen. Haiti’s minister of elections, Mathias Pierre, told the Washington Post that at least one more suspect is Haitian-American.

That should be reason enough for Haiti to ask President Biden to send federal investigators to assist its police in cracking the case and do so before the post-assassination political vacuum becomes too chaotic for anyone to handle.

The alternative, a UN probe, would ensure that if it ever arrives, a resolution will come long after Haiti falls into the abyss.

Twitter @bennyavni