Chaos is intensifying in Haiti where at least a dozen people died during the escape of several thousand inmates from the national penitentiary in Port-au-Prince; this prison was attacked by armed gangs seeking to free prisoners on the night of Saturday March 2 to Sunday March 3.
“We counted many bodies of detainees,” Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday. He explained that around 100 inmates were still present in the prison on Sunday, down from around 3,800 before the attack.
An AFP journalist who went there on Sunday morning saw around ten bodies around the prison. Some bore the marks of bullets or projectiles, according to him. He was able to go to the penitentiary, where the door was “open” and where there was “almost no one,” he said.
The government speaks of “heavily armed criminals”
During the night from Saturday to Sunday, police officers “tried to repel an assault by criminal gangs against the national penitentiary and the Croix des Bouquets prison,” the government said in a statement. “This assault left several prisoners and prison administration staff injured,” he added.
The government denounced the “rampages of heavily armed criminals wanting at all costs to free people in custody, particularly for kidnapping, murder and other serious offenses.” The national police “will do everything possible to track down fleeing prisoners, arrest those responsible for these criminal acts and their accomplices,” assured the government.
Regarding the Croix des Bouquets prison, it is currently unknown how many inmates were able to escape, according to Pierre Espérance. It housed around 1,450 detainees before the attack, he said.
The deployment of an international mission expected
A poor Caribbean country, Haiti is facing a serious political, security and humanitarian crisis since the assassination, in 2021, of President Jovenel Moïse. Security forces are overwhelmed by gang violence, which has taken control of swaths of the country, including the capital, Port-au-Prince. Since Thursday, armed gangs have been attacking strategic sites, saying they want to overthrow the contested Prime Minister, Ariel Henry. In power since 2021, the latter should have left office at the beginning of February.
Several common law prisoners, known gang leaders and those accused in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse were incarcerated at the national penitentiary, located a few hundred meters from the national palace.
On Friday, Kenya and Haiti signed an agreement to send Kenyan police officers to the Caribbean country, as part of an international mission supported by the UN. Visiting Nairobi this week, Ariel Henry discussed “accelerating the deployment” of this force with Kenyan President William Ruto. The Kenyan Parliament validated the deployment, before it was blocked by a court decision at the end of January.