Vitel’homme Innocent, appearing on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list of fugitives, reveals the image of a frenzied man. It’s the picture you’d expect of a gang leader accused of destabilizing a nation, who claims to be under divine protection and who is wanted for alleged kidnappings, with a $2 million bounty on his head.
In person, he projects a different image, at least to guests. Powerful, certainly, surrounded by armed disciples who react to his slightest glance – but also attentive, with a cooler full of sandwiches for his visitors, and a propensity to philosophize during conversation.
After weeks of negotiations, CNN entered Haiti’s gang territory earlier this month to speak with Innocent, whose armed group Kraze Baryé is among the allied armed groups that have plunged Haiti into a crisis of insecurity. He is an influential voice among the country’s gang leaders, and believes peace must be restored. But under what conditions ?
On the edge of the Tabarre neighborhood in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince last week, a truck drove us through a maze of winding dirt roads, passing checkpoints manned by armed guards in balaclavas and Halloween masks. We passed through what was once an upscale neighborhood; pink bougainvillea still spilled over the high walls, and a green soccer field offered a wonderful view of the city below.
Now it’s almost a ghost town. Cars and motorcycles began following our car, their drivers masked, long rifles protruding from the windows. Some vehicles carried the flying red and blue Haitian flags of a motley diplomatic convoy.
After about 45 minutes, a gold car parked in front and stopped. Innocent himself is out. He was thin and seemingly unarmed, dressed in a bright striped batik suit and soft loafers, with a cluster of gold chains and a cross around his neck. He led us to a rococo mansion, where elaborate gold velvet chairs and sofas, crystals in display cases, and plastic flower arrangements hinted at the former owners.
We sat, removing teddy bears from the seats to make room, and talked about the future.
“The Haiti that we had, Haiti, the pearl of the Antilles in which we grew up, could yet become the most beautiful again,” said Innocent, speaking softly in Haitian Creole. “One day, someone could sit at the Champ de Mars and eat ice cream.”
Today, the capital’s iconic Champ de Mars park is a war zone between gangs and police. After years of political unrest, institutional neglect and a series of brutal natural disasters, Haiti’s misfortune came to a head last month with an unprecedented wave of gang violence that effectively paralyzed Port-au-Prince.
The city’s main seaport and airport are closed. Government ministries have been stormed by refugees fleeing gang attacks. Dead bodies lie among uncollected trash in the streets and neighborhoods still free from gang control have seen the emergence of fear-filled militias, who kill and burn suspected foreigners.
Signs of city dysfunction were evident in the Kraze Baryé stronghold. Inside Innocent’s huge house, the air was calm and warm; his soldiers were working to turn on a generator to power the air conditioning or a fan. No one had bothered to remove the wrecked sedan that was still next to the pool, with its windows blown out and its four flat tires.
But the man on the gold couch preferred to talk about a brighter future – the one he claims Haiti’s gangs are ready to bring about.
Sitting down with one of Haiti’s gang leaders is controversial in the country, given the suffering and terror that armed groups have long sown. Arson and gang rape are favored tactics by gangs to subjugate civilians, experts say, and the United Nations has recorded gang-related killings of at least 1,660 people and kidnappings of at least 438 people – including 21 children – during the first 90 days of the year only.
Innocent himself is the subject of UN sanctions for numerous human rights violations committed by Kraze Baryé under his leadership, and is wanted by the Haitian National Police for kidnapping for ransom, murder, rape, armed rape , vehicle theft, theft and destruction of property. His group is known for directly targeting the Haitian National Police, and has sought to take over some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince.
Gangs and oligarchs
Innocent, 37, presents the broad alliance of gangs attacking Haitian institutions as a progressive enterprise. “Our dream is to get rid of the oligarchs who are preventing the country from progressing,” he said of the gang coalition called Viv Ansanm, or “Living Together.”
In February, Viv Ansanm launched an unprecedented attack on the Haitian state, attacking police stations, prisons, government buildings, hospitals, the national palace, the national library, cargo ships and the public electricity company . Their attacks coincided with a visit by then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry to Nairobi for talks on Kenya leading a multinational security force to reinforce the Haitian national police.
Henry eventually resigned, as Viv Ansanm demanded – but Innocent says the gangs now oppose the transitional governing council created to replace him. Innocent’s solution: “Sit down and listen to Viv Ansanm.” Then, he suggested, “there will be a resolution as soon as possible.”
He criticizes the governing council as more of the same, and says it is time for the old political elites to go – an opinion shared by many in Haiti. But the gangs have long had a symbiotic relationship with the nation’s leaders, who have used armed groups to put pressure on rivals through kidnappings and other attacks.
The relationship continues today – although Haiti’s gangs are increasingly acting independently to accumulate money and power, experts say.
“Yes, I have an armed group. I lead them,” said Innocent, when asked about Kraze Baryé’s participation in the kidnappings. “But when you really think about it, would these guys really have any idea who to kidnap and who not to kidnap? Not at all.”
“It’s really the same people who sit with (regional body) CARICOM to represent the country. If you choose to block them, they will call us and say: ‘I have such and such a job… Fix it for us.’ And then you hear that so-and-so was kidnapped or so-and-so was taken hostage,” he says.
It is corrupt officials who supply guns and ammunition to gangs today, he says.
“Let’s take a clear example. We are not able to travel. We are not able to import. We are not able to export. Yet there are still weapons arriving. There are still bales. And we don’t have any representative at the border. Yet, exactly how do they get to us? he said.
The corruption he describes is no secret. Haiti currently ranks 172nd out of 180 countries in the Global Corruption Perceptions Index. Over the past year, sanctions from Canada and the United States have accused former prime ministers and presidents in Haiti – among dozens of other influential Haitians – of corruption and financing the country’s gangs, among other things. crimes.
Driving CNN through his territory, Innocent said he remembers local elders farming in Tabarre during his youth in the 1980s and 1990s. “Of course we could harvest in those days,” he recalled. Today, he blames Haiti’s dependence on imported food as another sign of the country’s mismanagement by the upper class, thereby depriving ordinary people of economic opportunity.
Before he took up arms, he claims, his own legitimate businesses, including a construction company, a hotel and a car rental company, were destroyed by powerful business interests in the region.
‘Why attack ordinary people if you’re trying to stand up for the people?’
‘Predator and protector
Several of Innocent’s peers have established public personas through the press and social media. Ex-police officer Jimmy Chérizier, known as Barbecue, presents himself as a Robin Hood type figure. Izo, of the “Five Second” gang which operates near the country’s main port, is also a musician, who shares music videos online. And 400 Mawozo leader Lanmo Sanjou was recently photographed smoking cigars with a social media influencer.
Although they are allies, sometimes meeting via video conference, the Viv Ansanm alliance does not necessarily mean friendship. Escorting CNN to the edge of his territory, Innocent showed us a wide riverbed and a lush, tree-lined landscape beyond. But he repeatedly said we should not linger long, as his troops deployed in sneakers and flip-flops, a motley assortment of weapons at the ready.
Kraze Baryé employs around 100 men and women, according to Innocent’s lieutenant and cousin, bleached blond Dezod Augustin, 34. On the day of CNN’s visit, several members of the gang wore personalized t-shirts with teddy bears on the front and letters on the back that read “Tabarre Zone Security Unit.”
Walking slowly down an unpaved street full of vendors, Innocent could have been any politician at a town hall, stopping to massage the injured foot of an old market woman, and introducing CNN to two blind men whom he had taken under his protection, blaming the Haitian state for not taking care of them.
Less than a kilometer from all this is the United States Embassy, soldiers stationed on its roof to constantly scan the surrounding moor. Just last week, members of Kraze Baryé attacked a nearby civilian neighborhood, chasing around 150 people from their homes in the dark and shooting one man in the heart, according to a witness.
As an island within Innocent territory, the diplomatic complex is an inversion of the relationship between Haiti and the United States itself; here, Kraze Baryé is the formidable regional power, dominating the districts of Torcelle, Tabarre and Delmas that the Americans must cross to reach their embassy.
This uncomfortable geography also means that Innocent finds himself between the rest of Haiti’s gangs and Washington, whose capacity and appetite for military intervention in the country’s bloody chaos is the subject of constant speculation at home.
Until now, the United States has sought to avoid any military impasse in Haiti. Instead, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in March that the United States would contribute $300 million to a multinational security support mission in the country. But so far only $18 million has been deposited in a UN-managed Trust Fund for the mission, with $8.7 million provided by Canada, $3.2 million provided by France and $6 million provided by the United States.
The Kenyan-led mission, which would also include personnel from the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Chad and Jamaica, is currently on hold due to concerns about political instability in Haiti.
And despite – or perhaps because of – his “most wanted” status, Innocent seems interested in maintaining friendly relations with the Kraze Baryé embassy.
“It’s an honor when a country has its embassy nearby, it’s because they want to collaborate with us,” Innocent said.
Haiti now has a transitional government, sworn in on Thursday. The tasks of appointing a new head of government and a cabinet remain to come; coordinating the arrival of a multinational security force to retake the capital; and finally the holding of highly anticipated elections.
But Haitian gangs maintain they deserve a place at the negotiating table. If they don’t get it, Viv Ansanm will exert her influence in other ways, Innocent warns.
“You will understand that when you realize that planes cannot fly. When you see that investors cannot come in. When you analyze that there are a bunch of foreigners who were already in the country with projects and who were forced to flee to their countries to wait for stability,” he said.
Among their demands, the gangs want an amnesty under any future government, Innocent says, as well as a plan for the future of the many young people currently following his orders – issues that have also been raised by members of the governing council.
“When we give up our guns, we need to know that we have a state that will provide a framework for the future. Can I tell someone to drop their gun and take a stone to eat? Not at all,” says Innocent.
CNN
