Haiti’s most notorious gang leader plots its future amid rebellion

The most prominent leader behind the ongoing armed rebellion in Haiti has a simple message for the country’s leader, acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry: Step down and the violence ends, at least temporarily.

“If Ariel Henry resigns, we are going to call for a truce just to evaluate the situation,” Jimmy Chérizier told ABC News.

Chérizier, commonly known as “Barbecue,” called it a public pledge.

“Everywhere around Port-au-Prince that is currently blocked or inaccessible will be reopened and we will automatically stop the attacks on the police stations,” he said.

Such calm would be a welcome relief in a country that has been decimated by exploding violence over the last two weeks.

An unprecedented alliance between Haiti’s oft-warring gangs has launched a series of massive, coordinated attacks on government institutions. Government buildings, police stations and even the presidential palace have all been targeted. Prison breaks have freed thousands of prisoners, and constant gunfire has forced the international airport to close and has all but sealed off Port-au-Prince from the outside world.

Jimmy Cherizier, a former elite police officer known as Barbecue who now runs a gang federation, holds a press conference in the Delmas 6 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, March 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Odelyn Joseph/AP

Barbecue has claimed credit for it all, with one stated goal.

“The first step is to overthrow Ariel Henry and then we will start the real fight against the current system, the system of corrupt oligarchs and corrupt traditional politicians,” he told ABC News in a video call. “Not only are we fighting against Ariel Henry, but we are also fighting against everyone who has some complicity.”

Henry has been in power since shortly after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. Henry was backed by the U.S. in a power-sharing agreement designed to bring new elections to Haiti as soon as possible.

Henry has since made several promises to bring new elections and step down, first in September 2021, then by the end of 2022, and then by January 2024. They’ve all been unmet, with Henry citing security and logistics concerns each time. In late February, Henry agreed to hold elections in August 2025.

“The Haitian people are tired and have had enough from Ariel Henry who supposedly had a mission to provide security and to organize the elections,” said Barbecue. “During more than the three years’ time he has spent as the head of state, Ariel Henry has not honored any of the political agreements he has signed.”

So, he said, his violent campaign for regime change is justified.

Barbecue presents himself as a man of the people, a Robin Hood, Che Guevara-esque figure. He sometimes wears a beret.

But he is also a disgraced former policeman now wanted by his former colleagues, accused of taking part and helping plan the massacre of 71 people in Haiti’s Saline neighborhood in 2018.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Barbecue not long after, writing that during the massacre “Gangs removed victims, including children, from their homes to be executed and then dragged them into the streets where their bodies were burned, dismembered, and fed to animals.”

The U.S. government also accused him of organizing a series of attacks over five days in 2020 throughout Port-au-Prince where many civilians were killed and houses burned.

The UN added its own sanctions in 2022. “Jimmy Cherizier (AKA ‘Barbeque’) has engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Haiti and has planned, directed, or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses,” wrote the U.N. Security Council in its adopted resolution.

Barbecue has since unified his gang with other notorious criminal groups in the country, calling the alliance the Viv Ansanm, “living together” in Haitian Creole. Included in this new group is Vitel’homme Innocent, leader of Haiti’s Kraze Barye gang. Innocent was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List late last year, wanted for allegedly kidnapping nearly two dozen U.S. citizens alongside extortion and theft. The FBI is offering a $2 million reward for his capture.

Barbecue’s unholy alliance of killers, kidnappers and rapists have together terrorized the country for years, using murder, kidnapping and extortion to take over some 80% of the capital city according to the U.N.

For many, he is a symbol of the death of the state and the rise of the gangster.

Barbecue said he rejects the assertion that he is part of the problem.

“They have used the local press and the international press to assassinate my character,” he said. “I challenge anyone who could say, even once, that a person who was kidnapped said Jimmy Chérizier took part in the kidnapping. Never! This is the speech of the people against whom I am fighting — just because I am denouncing the system.”

He is right about at least one thing. Haiti has been plagued with economic inequality for decades, controlled by an oligarchical class enriching itself on the backs of ordinary people, often with the complicity of the international community, including the United States.

He claims to be fighting a holy war of sorts for the soul of Haiti, to deliver it back into the hands of its chosen people, the everyday Haitian beat down by years of abuse, racism and corruption.

For the people he claims to want to save, daily life has now ground to a halt.

Schools are closed and hospitals have shuttered. For the lucky ones who have jobs, many don’t go for fear of being killed along the way. For the worst-off, of which there are millions, getting food or fresh water is increasingly difficult. Famine is a true threat, according to the World Food Programme and other aid organizations.

“For me to eat, someone has to give me the food. If I want to drink water, someone has to bring me a bag of water to drink from,” said Carline Joseph, a Port-au-Prince resident forced from her home due to the violence. “The way I see the country, this situation, it makes me afraid. The only thing I know is that I have trust in God. After that, I don’t know where my hope is.”

Hope certainly won’t come from acting Prime Minister Henry, a near-universally loathed figure in Haiti who currently is in Puerto Rico, unable to return due to the violence.

Henry had left Haiti for a trip to Kenya just before the uprising began, attempting to secure the deployment of an U.N.-authorized force of 1,000-plus Kenyan police officers to help restore security in Haiti.

Barbecue, the leader of the “G9 and Family” gang, stands with his fellow gang members after speaking to journalists in the Delmas 6 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, March 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Odelyn Joseph/AP

There is no timetable for the deployment of that force, and though Henry sits in Puerto Rico, stripped of the ability to govern, he refuses to resign.

This week, a series of emergency meetings will be held by Caribbean leaders to attempt to come up with a political solution to this stalemate. The U.S., which long backed Henry to the consternation of many in Haiti, has seemingly decided that enough is enough.

The State Department is putting more public pressure on Henry than ever before to agree to the appointment of a new presidential transition council, with a spokesman saying, “We are urging him to expedite the transition to an empowered and inclusive government structure.”

Past U.S. support for Henry, combined with how hated he has become in Haiti, has led many, including Barbecue, to be skeptical of any U.S. influence over whatever happens next.

“My message for the international community, especially the United States that has a longstanding relationship with the Haitian people, I am telling them that they cannot keep treating the Haitian people like that,” he said.

Question remain about what would happen if Henry resigns and a new transition council takes over. Would they continue to back an international security force deployment to the streets? How quickly could they bring new elections? What popular mandate would they have? And how, after the indisputably pivotal role Barbecue and armed groups have played in forcing these issues to be decided, could Haitians extricate gangs and their leaders from the political process?

When Barbecue appears in public, he is usually surrounded by men with guns, wearing balaclavas. But when Barbecue speaks, he sounds like a politician. He demurred when asked directly if he wants to be president.

“I am not the one to decide if I want to be president or not,” he said. “It is the Haitian people that will decide who should be their president, who should lead the country. Personally, I consider myself a servant [of the country].”