The Croix-des-Bouquets prison was also attacked yesterday, Saturday. It is unclear whether any prisoners escaped
It’s eight o’clock yesterday Saturday evening. The man hastens his pace, in inky blackness.
Visibly in his sixties, he holds up his pants as he arrives in front of around fifteen police officers at the Western Departmental Directorate (DDO) of the Haitian National Police (PNH), near Champ-de -March.
“I am a prisoner of the national penitentiary, commanders,” he said. I spent around ten years in prison for theft and criminal conspiracy. I have never been judged. I want to go to Pétion-Ville.”
Around the surreal scene, explosions worthy of a battlefield resonate. Some police officers call for the execution of the distraught old man. But according to a witness, the majority of agents decided to let him go.
I’m a prisoner of the national penitentiary, commanders. I spent around ten years in prison for theft and criminal conspiracy. I have never been judged. I want to go to Pétion-Ville.
Leaving for the unknown, since this Sunday, March 3, 2024, several corpses – presented as former prisoners of the penitentiary – litter the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Before the armed attack of incredible violence that occurred yesterday, March 2, the penitentiary housed nearly 3,800 prisoners. Two sources close to the prison authorities say that the vast majority of them escaped, according to findings this Sunday morning.
“Inventories are underway,” says the source.
AyiboPost notices two lifeless bodies at the corner of rue Cameau and Avenue Christophe. A source close to the prison system presents them as former prisoners, apprehended and executed by the population near the Oloffson hotel last night.
Read also: Police officers deserted the national penitentiary
Several seriously injured prisoners were discovered this morning in the courtyard of Bird College, near the national penitentiary. The institution’s lawyer asked the government commissioner to send a justice of the peace to collect them. It is not clear whether these efforts were successful.
The Croix-des-Bouquets prison was also attacked yesterday, Saturday. It is unclear whether any prisoners escaped.
“I don’t understand the ease with which the largest prison in the country was emptied of its prisoners,” a police officer present near the scene told AyiboPost last night.
This incomprehension runs through the police institution. Three officers tell AyiboPost that the prison doors were left open when police officers buried themselves in the stampede.
I don’t understand the ease with which the largest prison in the country was emptied of prisoners.
“There was collusion within the National Prison Administration,” analyzes Samuel Madistin, an influential lawyer whose several clients end up in the penitentiary, to AyiboPost.
Same 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.
The agents on site were quickly overwhelmed by the events. “The bandits had their plan, the police did not,” another police officer on the scene told AyiboPost last night.
To defend his colleagues, deserters, he takes the example of the police officers murdered on February 29 at the Bon Repos Sub-Police Station. The latter, according to him, unsuccessfully called for help for hours. At the national penitentiary, the agents “did not want to suffer the same fate” in a context where at least one drone controlled by the gangs was flying over the prison, he said.
Par Widlore Mérancourt et Rolph Louis-Jeune
Cover photo: Reginald Louissaint Jr. / AFP
Watch this report produced by AyiboPost in 2019 on the problem of prolonged preventive detention in Haiti:
Keep in touch with AyiboPost via:
► Our channel Telegram : Click here
► Our Channel WhatsApp : Click here
► Our Community WhatsApp : Click here
