PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) – Former prime minister Jean Max Bellerive has been prevented from leaving the country by an investigating judge, probing a murder dating back to 2012.

The investigating judge of the Court of First Instance of Port-au-Prince, Jean Wilner Morin, issued the order preventing Bellerive, who was scheduled to leave the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country on Monday, from traveling.

In the order, the investigating judge said that the Director of the Immigration and Emigration Service should take “all necessary measures to prevent” Bellerive, 59, who in 2009 was named to replace then prime minister Michèle Pierre-Louis, from leaving the country by air, land and sea.

Political observers here said that the ban comes as the investigation continues into the assassination of Alix Mary Junior Gassan in 2012, following the disappearance of Joseph Robert Marcello of the National Commission of Public Contracts.

On May 14, 2011, Bellerive resigned as prime minister so as to allow the country’s then new President, Michel Martelly, to choose his own prime minister.