Exclusive | What really happened at the national penitentiary in Haiti?

Two non-public reports, as well as exclusive interviews conducted by AyiboPost with actors on site, help to understand how thousands of prisoners were able to escape from the largest prison center in the country at the beginning of March

Sporadic shots rang out at varying intensity in the vicinity of the national penitentiary, a week before the escape.

The bandits had also communicated on the internet their intention to storm Haiti’s largest prison.

And, on March 2, 2024, they reached their objective in pitch black, trails of fire and a disastrous concert of deafening gunfire.

Two non-public reports, as well as exclusive interviews conducted by AyiboPost with a dozen officials and actors on site and in the surrounding area, help to understand how thousands of detainees were able to escape from the largest prison center in the country, in the most significant breakout of the decade.

***

Long before the attack, an audio recording leaked. In the six-minute, nine-second soundtrack, several individuals openly discuss the best ways to “take the penitentiary.”

This audio tape, widely distributed on WhatsApp, was transferred to at least one of the officials of the Prison Administration Directorate, notes AyiboPost.

Sporadic shootings, as well as direct clashes with the police, intensified in the vicinity of the institution from February 28, according to one of the two reports.

The next day, an inmate who was supposed to go to court was stuck in the prison until eight in the evening. She will leave the area thanks to the intervention of an armored vehicle.

A National Police of Haiti (PNH) armored vehicle is circulating near the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince.

On the Saturday of the attack, the majority of employees, police and administrative staff, did not show up. The tense situation around the prison for several days was presented as an excuse by most of them.

According to one of the penitentiary officials, around 70% of the forty employees, including police officers, were not present according to the day’s attendance list. It is not clear whether other employees were late and had not entered their names.

Powerful shots whistled in all directions around the penitentiary on the afternoon of March 2. Around 6:15 p.m., police officers supporting the DAP agents “moved,” we can read in a report sent to the director of the prison administration.

Police armored vehicles in the area disengage in the meantime. “It’s dark and the armored vehicles said they couldn’t take it anymore,” a police officer on site told AyiboPost the same evening.

A source at the Western Departmental Directorate (DDO) of the police at the Champ-de-Mars level, confirms for AyiboPost the arrival of a group of agents from the penitentiary around the time indicated in the report.

“More than half a dozen officers arrived,” the police officer told AyiboPost. We wanted to send them back to the penitentiary with an armored vehicle, but they refused to go back,” according to this police officer, who witnessed the scene.

According to one of two reports obtained exclusively by AyiboPost, the decisive assault began at 7:40 p.m.

Well before, one of the officials assigned to the penitentiary called and sent a request for reinforcement via WhatsApp to Pierre René François, the director of the DAP. This request remained unanswered.

Contacted by AyiboPost, the director denies the existence of messages or calls for help. “No calls, no messages,” Pierre René François told AyiboPost. The officers, he said, “gave no distress signal and made no call to say they were going to disengage.”

However, according to the director, “we can still understand the situation. It was not easy for them to manage.”

Long before the attack, an audio recording leaked. In the six-minute, nine-second soundtrack, several individuals openly discuss the best ways to “take the penitentiary.”

The bandits launch a final assault!

Confusion, mixed with excitement and fear, reigns inside the prison, while outside, the machine gunfire accelerates. According to several prisoners on site, many detainees were already out of their cells, well before the escape.

In his report, one of the officials present this evening writes that he looked at the scene “rationally”. After the departure of the support agents around six o’clock, the others «were unable to resist the repeated attacks of the gangs».

Earlier, the bandits had captured images of the prison with a drone. One of the videos began to circulate widely via WhatsApp.

Faced with what an on-site official calls an “imminent danger” in his report, he says he “took cover. And the DAP police officers who were in strategic points, internal and external facades, also had to take cover. »

It is then that the prison begins to empty of its occupants.

“The bandits had their plan, the police did not,” another police officer in the vicinity of the prison center told AyiboPost during the escape.

***

The next day, Sunday March 3, officials went to the penitentiary to assess the damage. The main entrance barrier was not destroyed.

escape of haiti prisoners

From the outside, curious passers-by look inside the penitentiary, through the main entrance door of the penitentiary, wide open the day after the prisoners’ escape.

“All the cell doors remained open with the exception of the one where the detainee Joseph Felix Badio was, incarcerated in the assassination case of former president Jovenel Moïse,” indicates one of the reports submitted to those responsible of the DAP.

According to the report of the National Penitentiary, obtained exclusively by AyiboPost, out of a number of 3,696 inmates only 87 have not escaped – some due to lack of interest or because they are old or ill.

National penitentiary escape

Sunday March 3, 2024, a sick prisoner, who had been pushed and broken during the escape of March 2, 2024, was assisted by a man. Another is lying on the ground. | © Jean Feguens Regala/AyiboPost

Most of them were transferred to Delmas 33 prison and to the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) the following day, March 3.

Colombians in prison Haiti

Three of the Colombians involved in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse walk in the courtyard of the national penitentiary the day after the escape, Sunday March 3, 2024.

In a note published on March 10, a police union describes this spectacular escape as a “conspiracy”. SPNH-17 is demanding sanctions against those responsible who had to act to avoid this event, its spokesperson Garry Jean Baptiste confirms to AyiboPost.

“There was collusion within the national prison administration,” Samuel Madistin, an influential lawyer whose several clients ended up in the penitentiary, told AyiboPost.

Similar reaction from Pierre Esperance, director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH). It was known that the bandits were planning to attack the prison center, but “the high command did nothing,” says the human rights defender. “Only Frantz Elbé – police director – can give explanations to the justice system: for me, they handed over the prison to the bandits,” he maintains.

For the general coordinator of the National Union of Haitian Police Officers, Lionel Lazarre, explanations are needed concerning the inaction of those responsible in the face of requests for reinforcement from police officers at the National Penitentiary.

***

The day after the attack, sets of prison keys, police uniforms and administrative documents were found on the ground, according to one of the two reports obtained by AyiboPost. Most of the padlocks and barriers were broken.

“We did what we could,” Pierre René François, director of the DAP, told AyiboPost. “We didn’t just have the national penitentiary to consolidate,” he said. “There was also the national palace, the base of the Departmental Unit for Maintaining Order (UDMO), the Port-au-Prince police station, the airport… the bandits were everywhere and it was not easy to manage. »

Immediately after the escape from the Penitentiary on March 2, 2024, the civil prison of Croix-des-bouquets was attacked the same day, around 8:30 in the evening, Zao Isaac, the director of this center confirms to AyiboPost.

On site at the time of the attack, Isaac was hit by a projectile in the stomach. He has already undergone an operation.

More than ten days after his hospitalization, the manager revealed that he had not received any visits or calls from the police high command.

Contacted by AyiboPost, the spokesperson for the Haitian National Police, Garry Desrosiers, did not react for this article.

Since the successful attack at the penitentiary, the bandits have continued to carry out targeted attacks against police officers. At least half a dozen stations of the institution were either attacked or set on fire.

On Thursday March 14, 2024, it was the residence of the head of the PNH, Frantz Elbé, which was looted and then partly burned by gangs at La Plaine.

Trade unionist Lionel Lazarre considers this attack as a clear message sent to all those responsible in the country: “no one is safe”.

Nearly two weeks after the attack, a fire of unknown origin could be observed inside the civil prison of Port-au-Prince. The firefighters were able to put it out in time, but, according to a police officer assigned to the National Penitentiary, the space remains without any security system since the attacks by armed bandits.

Fire at Haiti National Penitentiary (2)

Agents from the National Penitentiary Administration (APENA) have arrived on site to accompany the firefighters who were going to attempt to extinguish the fire that occurred at the prison nearly two weeks after the escape.

Fire at the penitentiary