Three more of the 17 American and Canadian missionaries taken hostage by a gang in Haiti in October were released this Sunday (5), according to the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries group.
Abducted more than 50 days ago, the freedmen are now safe and in apparent good health, according to the statement, but another 12 victims remain in captivity.
According to Haitian police, the hostages were kidnapped on Oct. 16 by Haitian gang 400 Mawozo, who asked for a ransom of $1 million (BRL 5.68 million) per person. The group was captured in the Croix-des-Bouquets region, about 13 kilometers from the capital Port-au-Prince, and consisted of 16 Americans and a Canadian.
Five children and six women were among the abducted people. It is still unclear which of them are still in the criminals’ possession, but two weeks ago the first two hostages were released.
The FBI, the US federal police, had sent a group of officers to the Caribbean country to help investigate the kidnapping. In August, the US government had recommended that its citizens not travel to Haiti due to local instability and the risk of kidnappings.
With political and economic crises escalating, this type of crime has become a common tool for criminal groups to raise money — there were at least 628 episodes of the type from January to September 2021, according to the Haitian Center for Analysis and Research on Human Rights .
Haiti – the first country in Latin America to declare itself independent, in 1804, and accustomed to political and economic crises since then – is experiencing one of its worst moments.
In July, President Jovenel Moïse, accused of authoritarianism, was assassinated by mercenaries — 48 people, including 18 Colombians and 2 Americans of Haitian origin, were arrested. The episode sparked protests, with shortages of supplies and cases of street violence.
The country’s attorney general, Bed-Ford Claude, added the prime minister, Ariel Henry, to the list of suspects. According to Claude, telephone records indicated that the prime minister communicated at least twice with Joseph Badio, one of the main suspects of involvement in the murder, on the night of the crime.
In response, Henry removed the prosecutor from office and accused the authorities of “distracting maneuvers to create confusion and prevent justice from doing its job calmly.” General elections, initially scheduled for September, have been postponed to the end of 2022.​
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