The Haitian gang that had kidnapped a group of American and Canadian missionaries in October freed the last hostages, Haiti police announced on Thursday (16).
They were kidnapped on Oct. 16 by the 400 Mawozo gang, who ransomed $1 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, who had traveled to Haiti on a mission organized by the NGO Christian Aid Ministries.
Five children and six women were among the abducted people. In November, the gang released the first two hostages, and two weeks later three more people were released. Now, according to police, the other 12 captured are free. There is still no information about their health status.
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 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.
In addition to the assassination of the president, the country faced a magnitude 7.2 earthquake leaving more than 2,200 people dead and nearly 400 injured on 14 August.
The earthquake, which hit the southwestern part of the country with greater intensity, also shook urban infrastructure. More than 130 thousand homes had their structure compromised. Faced with the spiral of problems, the country has become a symbol of the migration crisis on the US border, with thousands of Haitians seeking refuge.
In the early morning hours of last Tuesday (14), a tanker truck exploded in Cap-Haitien, the second largest city in the country, and left 75 dead.
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