Two of the 17 American and Canadian missionaries taken hostage by a gang in Haiti last month were released, he said in a statement to Christian Aid Ministries, the organization that brought the group to the country.
According to local police, the hostages were kidnapped on Oct. 16 by Haitian gang 400 Mawozo, who asked for a ransom of $1 million (BRL 5.61 million) per person. The group was captured in the Croix-des-Bouquets region, about 13 kilometers from Port-au-Prince, and consists of 16 Americans and a Canadian. Five children and six women are among the abducted people.
Among those kidnapped, there is also an eight-month-old baby. The other teenagers and children taken are 3, 6, 14 and 15 years old, according to the government. `Christian Aid Ministries has not released information about who was released or when and how the rescue took place.
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 advised its citizens not to 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 .
According to Gédéon Jean, the organization’s director, the 400 Mawozo gang was born in Croix-des-Bouquets—”Mawozo” means “from the countryside” in Haitian Creole. The group began its activities stealing cattle, until it started stealing corrosives and, more recently, kidnapping people to demand ransom.
In April, ten French religious were kidnapped by a gang in the same region. Released after 20 days of captivity, Father Michel Briand said the group was “in a bad place, in a bad time” and that whoever kidnapped them had not planned the action. According to estimates, the violence has spread through the capital Port-au-Prince, which already has half the city controlled by gangs.
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, Haiti saw its social situation deteriorate after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake left 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.
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