Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, leader of the “G9 family” gang alliance, on Tuesday threatened Haiti with a “civil war” if Prime Minister Ariel Henry did not resign. This former police officer hit by UN sanctions has become one of the public figures of the new escalation of violence in the country.
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Automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, who likes to present himself as a revolutionary, leads one of the most powerful gangs ravaging Haiti, not hesitating to attack critical infrastructure and demand the heads of the elites.
At 46, the leader of the gang alliance “the G9 family” is one of the public figures of the new escalation of violence in recent days in the poor Caribbean country devastated by a security, humanitarian and political crisis.
The Haitian armed groups, most often divided and each struggling to expand their territory, announced last week that they were ganging up against the government and have since carried out attacks against strategic sites, airports, police academy and prisons, from where thousands of detainees were able to escape.
“There is no question of a small group of rich people living in large hotels deciding the fate of residents of working-class neighborhoods,” Jimmy Chérizier proclaimed Tuesday to the press, surrounded by hooded men. “We must unite. Either Haiti becomes a paradise for all of us, or a hell for all of us,” he added, threatening a “civil war” if Prime Minister Ariel Henry does not resign.
This is not the first time that the former police officer has been talked about. In 2022, at the head of the G9 alliance, he blocked the country’s main oil terminal for months, paralyzing fuel distribution and plunging Haiti further into chaos. This episode sparked calls for a multinational force to be sent to help the overwhelmed Haitian police – a mission still on hold.
“Burned, dismembered bodies”
And a sign of his influence, Jimmy Chérizier was the first to be included in October 2022 on the brand new UN sanctions regime against Haitian armed bands (travel ban, asset freeze, targeted arms embargo).
But despite everything, “Barbecue continues to commit acts that threaten the peace, security and stability of Haiti, commented last September the UN committee of experts responsible for monitoring sanctions. Their report details the criminal activities of the kaleidoscope of gangs which control entire sections of the country, in particular the capital.
For the G9 and its more than 1,000 men, mainly former police officers, former security agents and street children, the list is long: murders, thefts, extortion, rapes, targeted assassinations, drug trafficking, kidnappings, fires…
These experts also discuss the involvement of “Barbecue” in the “Saline massacre” which occurred in 2018 in this slum of the capital. “While he was an officer of the Haitian National Police, Jimmy Chérizier planned and participated in the La Saline attacks,” also assured the US Treasury Department by placing him under sanctions at the end of 2020.
During these events which left 71 dead in a few days, gangs, sometimes used by the authorities to silence the demands of working-class neighborhoods, “took victims, including children, out of their homes to execute and drag them in the street where their bodies were burned, dismembered, and fed to animals”, he wrote then, referring to the support given to Chérizier by two senior officials in the administration of former Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, assassinated in 2021.
But the gang leader, who regularly posts videos on social networks with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, rejects the accusations against him. “I am not a gangster, I will never be a gangster”, he affirmed in 2021 in an interview with the Al Jazeera channel, ensuring that he was fighting “for another society”.
With AFP