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 gunfire rang out at more or less intense intensities 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 biggest breakout of the decade.
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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 (DAP), 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.
An armored vehicle from the Haitian National Police (PNH) circulates 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 for their posts. 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 at their posts 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 a.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.
Read also: Police officers deserted the national penitentiary
A source at the Western Departmental Directorate (DDO) of the police at the Champ-de-Mars level, confirms for AyiboPost the arrival at the institution from a group of penitentiary officers 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 a.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 Pierre René François denies the existence of messages or calls for help.
‘No calls, no messages,’ says François at AyiboPost. “The agents,” 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 wasn’t 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-gun fire accelerates. According to several prisoners on site, many detainees were already out of their cells, well before the escape.
In his report, un officials present this evening wrote that they looked at the scene “rationally”. After the departure of the support agents around six o’clock, the others “were unable to resist the repeated assaults of the attackers.”
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 a manager on site calls in his report an “imminent danger”, he said 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.
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The next day, Sunday March 3, officials went to the penitentiary to assess the damage. The main entrance barrier was not destroyed.
From the outside, curious passers-by look inside the penitentiary, through the penitentiary’s main entrance door, wide open the day after the prisoners’ escape.
“All the cell doors remained open except for the one where[ait] the detainee Joseph Felix Badioincarcerated in the assassination case of former president Jovenel Moïse,” indicates one of the reports submitted to DAP officials.
Read also: What do we know about Joseph Félix Badio?
According to the results of the National Penitentiary, obtained exclusively by AyiboPost, out of a number of 3,696 inmates, only 87 did not escape – some, due to lack of interest or because they are old or ill.
Sunday March 3, 2024, a sick prisoner, who had been pushed and broken during the escape the day before, was assisted by a man. Another is lying on the ground.
Most of them were transferred to Delmas 33 prison and to the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) the following day, March 3.
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 of “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 (Synapoha), 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.
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During an observation made 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.”
Read also: Story of a spectacular escape from the national penitentiary
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, confirms to AyiboPost, the director of this center, Zao Isaac .
On site at the time of the attack, the person responsible was hit by a projectile in the stomach. Zao Isaac 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 attacked or burned.
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”.
Read also: Police officers desert the streets of Port-au-Prince
Nearly two weeks after the escape, 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.
Agents from the National Prison Administration (APENA) arrived on site to accompany the firefighters who were going to try to put out the fire that occurred at the prison almost two weeks after the escape.
A fire truck enters the prison to put out the fire.
Firefighters working to put out the fire.
Part of the national penitentiary was set on fire.
View of part of the penitentiary showing cells on fire.
Par Widlore Mérancourt et Rolph Louis-Jeune
Cover image: Agents of the Administrati The National Penitentiary (APENA) arrived on site to accompany the firefighters who were going to try to put out the fire that occurred at the prison almost two weeks after the escape.| © Jean Feguens Regala/AyiboPost
Watch this report produced by AyiboPost in 2019 on the problem of prolonged preventive detention in Haiti:
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