By Andre Paultre, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and David C. Adams
Gangs attacked two prisons in Haiti, including the country’s largest penitentiary, and allowed prisoners to escape Saturday night, according to Haitian officials, the latest instance of escalating violence and disorder in the country’s capital, which has been ravaged by gang violence for more than two years.
Although details of the attack remained murky, the government of Haiti released a statement Sunday saying that police officers were unable to prevent gang members from releasing “a large number of prisoners,” adding that several inmates and prison staff were injured.
Haiti’s national penitentiary held nearly 4,000 inmates at the time of the attack and the other facility, the Croix-des-Bouquets Civil Prison, held roughly 1,400, according to local human rights groups.
At least two of the country’s police unions went on social media Saturday requesting that all police officers report to the national prison in Port-au-Prince, the capital, to help control the situation and prevent the inmates from fleeing.
“If we let gangs take the penitentiary, we are done,” the national police union SNPH-17 said in a post on X. “No one will be spared in the capital.”
Haiti’s national penitentiary — built to hold only 800 — houses several high-profile inmates, such as the Colombian commandos accused of being part of the group that killed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.
A Haitian lawyer for several of the soldiers accused in the assassination, Samuel Madistin, told The New York Times that he had spoken to his clients who said the national prison was nearly emptied of inmates. Only those who were too old or disabled to flee and those accused in the Moïse killing remained, Madistin said, for fear of being hunted down if they left the prison.
Videos circulating on social media Sunday appeared to show journalists wandering through parts of the penitentiary mostly empty of prisoners.
“The attack was obvious,” said Lionel Lazarre, coordinator of the National Union of Haitian Police Officers, adding that gang members did not try to hide their plans to close in on the penitentiary. “There is a lack of care from police authorities who did not take these messages seriously or take enough measures to strengthen security.”
Commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille, a senior police officer in charge of operations in Port-au-Prince, said the internet had gone out, so it was difficult to get a situation assessment. Still, he said it appeared that most of the prisoners had escaped. “I don’t think there’s an inmate left down there,” he said, adding, “The gangs got together, so the attack force was in their favor.”
The Haitian government said it would track down the escaped prisoners and arrest those responsible for the attack.
Haiti has spiraled into a state of extreme unrest after Moïse’s assassination led to widespread gang violence and the near-complete collapse of security. Out of a force of about 15,000 officers, nearly 3,000 police officers have abandoned their posts in the past two years, according to police figures.
The country has no president nor any other elected national officials, and gangs — which have seized control of much of Port-au-Prince — terrorize thousands of people every day. Last year, at least 5,000 people were killed in Haiti, according to the United Nations.
Violence in the country escalated last week after Prime Minister Ariel Henry traveled to Kenya to finalize an agreement under which that country would send 1,000 police officers to help restore order to Haiti.
The assault on prisons is part of a wave of attacks that armed gangs have carried out in recent days while Henry is out of the country. The goal, according to Jimmy Chérizier, a gang leader known as Barbecue, is to overthrow what remains of the government.
In a video message Thursday, Chérizier said, “With our guns and with the Haitian people, we will free the country.”
On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a security alert warning American citizens to leave the country as soon as possible.
It is unclear whether an international police force led by Kenya, which has drawn criticism from human rights groups, could help check the violence. The recent attacks constitute a clear display of force in the gang-ravaged nation, experts say.
“The gangs seem to be sending an intimidation message to the troops that might be deploying soon in Haiti, saying, ‘Well, we are forming a united front and we can strike simultaneously,’” said Diego Da Rin, a Haiti expert with the International Crisis Group.
Romain Le Cour, a security analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, said, “It’s honestly a situation in which you have absolute absence and silence of the state,” adding that some of the violence had probably been planned for weeks, while some was spontaneous.
Although the authorities in Haiti have been losing ground for years, Le Cour said, the past few days have shown that the armed gangs have achieved a “crucial shift” in the balance of power.
“It is probably one of the first times that you have these directed, targeted attacks. It’s not like before,” he added. “Now they’re just going for it.”