Powerful Haitian gang leader writes UN seeking dialogue as clashes intensify

One of Haiti’s most pow­er­ful gang lead­ers has writ­ten the U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and re­quest­ed that the or­ga­ni­za­tion de­ploy a del­e­ga­tion to Haiti for di­a­logue and me­di­a­tion amid fears that Sal­vado­ran troops de­ployed af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of avi­a­tion tech­ni­cians from that coun­try could es­ca­late vi­o­lence.

Wil­son Joseph, best known as Lan­mò San­jou and leader of the 400 Ma­wozo gang, sent the let­ter on Mon­day, and the U.N. has re­ceived it, a source who wasn’t au­tho­rized to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion con­firmed. The let­ter calls 400 Ma­wozo a “rebel group” and was sent from Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, where a group of four Sal­vado­ran avi­a­tion tech­ni­cians were at­tacked on Oct. 18 and re­main miss­ing.

The in­ci­dent prompt­ed El Sal­vador’s pres­i­dent, Nay­ib Bukele, to de­ploy more than 2,000 troops to Haiti.

In his let­ter, Joseph wrote: “Giv­en Mr. Nay­ib Bukele’s venge­ful re­marks, ex­pec­ta­tions, and threats, I fear this sit­u­a­tion will lead to an es­ca­la­tion of vi­o­lence and a log­ic of reprisals, of which the Hait­ian peo­ple would be the first vic­tims.”

Joseph as­sert­ed that re­cent events in Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, es­pe­cial­ly where an­oth­er gang, Chen Mechan, op­er­ates, “are caus­ing se­ri­ous con­cern.”

Joseph wrote that he was “of­fi­cial­ly avail­able” to re­ceive the del­e­ga­tion that he “re­spect­ful­ly” re­quest­ed and would “par­tic­i­pate in any meet­ing aimed at find­ing a peace­ful so­lu­tion, a di­a­logue agree­ment, and a sus­tain­able sta­bi­liza­tion process.”

“I re­main con­vinced that di­a­logue must pre­vail over force,” he said. “The pro­tec­tion of civil­ians, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren and vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies, must be at the heart of any in­ter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive,” Joseph wrote.

More than 5,700 peo­ple have been killed or in­jured across Haiti from Jan­u­ary to mid-Sep­tem­ber, ac­cord­ing to the U.N. Clash­es have on­ly in­ten­si­fied ever since a gang-sup­pres­sion force work­ing along­side Hait­ian po­lice and sol­diers, as well as Vec­tus Glob­al — the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firm found­ed by for­mer U.S. Navy SEAL and Black­wa­ter founder Erik Prince — be­gan fight­ing armed men in Plaine du Cul-de-Sac near Port-au-Prince fol­low­ing the at­tack on the Sal­vado­rans.

In the two-page let­ter, Joseph said he has “of­fi­cial­ly raised the white flag” since Aug. 20 and seeks a “peace­ful so­lu­tion to the na­tion­al cri­sis, in par­tic­u­lar through the open­ing of a di­a­logue be­tween the in­ter­na­tion­al forces present in Haiti and the 400 Ma­wozo group.”

The group, which rough­ly trans­lates to “400 Sim­ple­tons,” op­er­ates large­ly in Croix-des-Bou­quets, a com­mu­ni­ty near Port-au-Prince. It is known for car­ry­ing out thou­sands of kid­nap­pings, in­clud­ing those in Oc­to­ber 2021 of 17 mis­sion­ar­ies, 16 of them from the U.S. and one from Cana­da. There were five chil­dren in that group, and all were even­tu­al­ly re­leased.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has is­sued a $1 mil­lion re­ward for Joseph, who was in­dict­ed in the U.S. on charges of con­spir­a­cy to com­mit hostage tak­ing and hostage tak­ing. — SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP)

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Sto­ry by DÁNI­CA CO­TO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press