A federal jury in Miami on Friday found four South Florida men guilty of plotting to assassinate President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti five years ago.

Despite the verdicts, the case has still left many people wondering who ordered the hit that sent the country spiraling into years of violent chaos.

Mr. Moïse was an unpopular president engaged in a bitter feud with economic elites in Haiti, whom he accused of monopolizing major industries, like energy, ports and food imports. He portrayed himself as a reformer fighting a predatory ruling class.

On July 7, 2021, dozens of Colombian commandos stormed his house on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

Mr. Moïse, 53, was shot in his bedroom as his wife, who was wounded, watched.

The four defendants, who were convicted on conspiracy charges, were all linked to Counter Terrorism Unit Federal Academy, a small security firm based in Miami, which had hired the commandos. None of the defendants were accused of directly participating in the killing.

According to their defense lawyers, the defendants, two of whom owned the security firm, believed they were acting on a legitimate Haitian court order when they hired the security contractors to overthrow, not kill, Mr. Moïse.

The defendants said that when the Colombians arrived, Mr. Moïse was already dead. Their defense lawyers suggested that a former Haitian justice ministry official had commandeered their plan and had Mr. Moïse killed.

But evidence presented in the mountains of text messages, financial transfers and other evidence linking the men to the operation appeared to be too much for the jury to ignore.

Joverlein Moïse, the oldest son of the assassinated president, said he was pleased with the verdict. But he stressed that more work was needed to be done to determine the killing’s mastermind.

“I don’t think the trial was meant to tell us who ordered the assassination,” Mr. Moïse said. “Those four people were not the head of this thing; everybody knows that. A lot of people wanted my father dead.”

He said he was convinced that the killing was a long-planned operation designed to destabilize Haiti.

The assassination unleashed a wave of gang violence and mayhem in the country. More than one million people have fled their homes in recent years. With large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, considered too unsafe to travel, officials have not been able to hold elections to select Mr. Moïse’s replacement.

No elections have been held in Haiti in 10 years, leaving the parliament and other elected posts vacant.

Several witnesses at the trial testified that the architect of the killing was a Haitian former justice ministry official, Joseph F. Badio, who held personal grievances against Mr. Moïse.

Mr. Badio, who was educated in New York, was a fugitive for two years before his 2023 arrest in Haiti. He was never charged by the Department of Justice or brought to trial in South Florida, as other defendants had been.

In court documents, prosecutors said bringing Mr. Badio to Miami would have delayed the trial.

Prosecutors pushed back on the defense theory that Mr. Badio “hijacked” the coup plot and was the sole mastermind of the assassination. They presented evidence showing that he worked closely with the Miami security firm.

“Saying Badio hijacked the plan is like saying Bonnie hijacked Clyde,” said Jason Wu, an assistant U.S. attorney, who prosecuted the case.

Germán Rivera, the leader of the Colombian commandoes, pleaded guilty in South Florida for his role in the assassination in 2023. He testified during the trial that one of the defendants, James Solages, instructed him before the attack to make sure no survivors remained — including the president’s wife, children and pets.

“All people in that house should die, that there was no one who was innocent,” Mr. Rivera told jurors as he cried.

Mr. Wu said the defendants planned to cash in on future contracts with a new government as part of a multibillion-dollar plan to develop the impoverished country. They were motivated by their “greed, their arrogance and their lust for power,” he said.

“Why this awful cruelty, this shocking brutality? So they could install a puppet as Haiti’s president,” he said.

After two days of deliberation, all four defendants were found guilty of five counts relating to conspiring to kill or kidnap the president and providing material support for the plot, as well as violating the U.S. Neutrality Act by undertaking an unlawful foreign military expedition.

The charges carry potential life sentences.

The defendants included the security company’s owners, Arcángel Pretel, 53, a Colombian-born former F.B.I. informant, and Antonio Intriago, 63, a Venezuelan American former security guard who started the firm in 2008, at first installing security cameras.

The other two defendants were Mr. Solages, 40, a Haitian American who worked in the maintenance department of a senior living center in South Florida before joining the security firm in Haiti, and Walter Veintemilla, 57, a wealthy Ecuadorean American mortgage and insurance broker who prosecutors said was the “money man” helping to finance the operation.

Although the defense lawyers worked as a team, evidence in the trial revealed that two of the defendants were more deeply involved in the plot. In text messages, Mr. Pretel and Mr. Solages hid vital information from Mr. Intriago about “the upcoming party,” using thinly veiled language about the assassination plan.

Much of the evidence in Miami was kept secret because it involved U.S. government informants and was filed under restrictive rules for classified national security matters.

Jurors heard evidence that Mr. Pretel was a longtime F.B.I. informant, who earned $138,000 over a decade providing information to the F.B.I. and D.E.A.

Prosecutors told jurors that Mr. Pretel never informed his F.B.I. handlers of the plot to kill Mr. Moïse.

Mr. Howard said evidence showing that Mr. Pretel had introduced some of the co-defendants to two F.B.I. handlers proved that his client thought he was participating in a lawful operation.

“You don’t invite your F.B.I. handler to your murder plot,” Mr. Howard said.

Mr. Howard said the defendants “got played” and were brought in to “take the fall.” He said he would appeal.

A medical expert for the defense testified that two bullets retrieved from the slain president’s body did not match his injuries. Defense lawyers theorized it had been planted as part of a parallel Haitian conspiracy to frame the Colombians and the security firm.

“The bullet is pristine,” said Jonathan Friedman, Mr. Solages’s lawyer. “Something does not smell right.

Marissel Descalzo, one of Mr. Veintemilla’s lawyers, said they would “keep fighting.”

Six other people had already pleaded guilty for their role in the plot, with all but one sentenced to life in prison.

Two of the Colombian commandos were sent to the United States for trial. Mr. Badio is jailed and awaiting trial in Haiti.

Because of an illness, a fifth defendant in the conspiracy case, Christian Sanon, a Haitian American pastor, is expected to be tried in Miami later this year.

The president’s widow, Martine Moïse, was not in the courtroom on Friday, but she released a statement thanking the federal government for the “moment of accountability.”

“The verdict is a step toward truth and healing, but it does not end here,” she said, adding that the “quest for truth as to the identities and roles of every participant in the conspiracy’’ would continue.

“My family and Haiti,’’ Ms. Moïse added, “deserve to know who else was involved in this attack.”