PORT-AU-PRINCE — In a country where gang-orchestrated killings have become all too common, it was the worst massacre in more than a decade: Dozens of people killed in a 24-hour period after corrupt cops and gang members clad in black barged into an impoverished Port-au-Prince neighborhood and unleashed terror.
Armed with guns and machetes, they went house to house raping and beheading unsuspecting residents and burning them alive. Others were dragged into narrow corridors, shot and hacked to death, their bodies dumped onto garbage heaps where their corpses were picked apart by pigs.
Six years after the massacre in Port-au-Prince’s La Saline neighborhood shook human rights groups and revealed an ugly truth — that Haitian gangs weren’t just ruthless, they were complicit with some government officials in their struggle for control and influence — the judicial system is finally ready to have those responsible for the deaths answer for their crimes.
Investigative Judge Jean Wilner Morin, who has been carrying out an inquiry into the November 2018 massacre, has issued a ruling charging 45 people with crimes ranging from murder to criminal conspiracy, and ordering them to stand trial. The list of names include gang members, police officers, a relative of former First Lady Sophia Martelly and two officials in the administration of late President Jovenel Moïse. Joseph Pierre Richard Duplan, the former delegate for the West region, which includes Port-au-Prince, was charged along with Fednel Monchery, the former director general of the interior ministry. Both were in office at the time of the massacre, which occurred early in Moïse’s presidency.
Also charged: Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, a former police officer who became the leader of a powerful gang alliance. Chérizier is accused of financing the massacre, according to the 20-page indictment issued on Thursday.
Duplan, Monchery and Chérizier were sanctioned in 2020 by the U.S. Treasury Department as human-rights abusers for their role in the massacre.
Human rights groups and residents of La Saline had long claimed that those involved in the massacre, which started at 2 a.m. on Nov. 12 and went on until the next day, weren’t just gang leaders working with corrupt cops to seize territory but also government officials seeking to block protests in the community, an opposition stronghold.
In his report, Morin says the “La Saline massacre was predictable.” About a month before the incident, he said, Duplan and Monchery were seen with supporters and leaders of armed gangs in several vehicles participating in a meeting with Chérizier.
He notes that a former lawmaker in Haiti’s Lower House of Deputies, Arnel Belizaire, testified that “despite all the steps he took, nothing was done by the political and police authorities to avoid the massacre of La Saline.”
The testimonies and evidence suggest there were alliances between gangs and their violent struggle for territory and influence over both the neighborhood and the Croix-des-Bossales public market, a source of income under the control of three gang leaders.
As a result of the testimonies, Morin said there was enough evidence to hold dozens of people accountable, including the two former government officials and Chérizier.
Monchery is charged with murder, attempted murder and arson. Morin noted that Monchery refused his request to present himself in order to tell “his version of the facts.” Instead, he said, Monchery “preferred to send a handwritten letter to the judge to ask him to suspend the investigation of the case.”
Duplan, who represented the presidency in the West region, did appear before the judge. But during his testimony, he claimed that accusations against him were the work of human-rights groups, which were the first to bring the killings to light and to publicly denounce them, and that he learned about the massacre from social media networks.
Morin didn’t buy either argument. He noted that Duplan, a former mayor, “even declares he does not remember his occupation or where he was when the victims claimed to have seen him in the company of gang leaders from La Saline distributing weapons and very large sums of money to the perpetrator of the massacre.”
Two witnesses testified before the investigative judge, whose work is similar to the way a grand jury operates in the U.S., of seeing Duplan distribute weapons prior to the massacre.
Duplan, according to the ruling, is charged with complicity in murder, attempted murder and criminal conspiracy.
The other high-profile individual now officially charged is Chérizier, the gang leader who in late February launched a united front with other gang leaders to topple the government and threatened civil war if the prime minister at the time, Ariel Henry, did not resign.
Morin said there is enough evidence and consistent testimony to send Chérizier, along with others, to stand trial as a co-author of the massacre.
Some of the witnesses who testified to the judge put Chérizier at the scene accompanied by more than five armed groups, and that they had seen a pick-up with the logo of the interior ministry and gang members inside.
Morin also indicted a relative of former First Lady Martelly, Pierre Léon Saint-Rémy, whose weapon ended up in the hands of gang members. Saint-Rémy worked in security at the National Palace and an investigation later revealed that a 5.56 caliber Galil assault rifle seized on Dec. 2, 2018, from a dismantled gang on Rue Porcelaine in Port-au-Prince and linked to another gang involved in the La Saline massacre had been assigned to him.
Morin asked “why such a large caliber weapon” had been placed at Saint-Rémy’s disposal and said the judicial police “tried in vain” to find Saint-Rémy to answer questions about the weapon. However, Saint-Rémy ignored a warrant requesting his appearance before the judge. Based on the findings of the investigation, Morin said there is reason to charge Saint-Rémy with complicity in murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and criminal association.
Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper previously reported that there was a strong probability that the Galil in question was among 56 such rifles provided to the National Palace during Michel Martelly’s presidency by the Haiti National Police that had gone missing. Three of the guns were eventually found during police operations abroad— two in Jamaica and another in the Dominican Republic. Three rifles were also found on Haitian territory, the newspaper reported.
By JACQUELINE CHARLES/Miami Herald