Jimmy “Barbecue” Charizier presents himself as a revolutionary, and is rarely photographed without a rifle and ammunition. The former policeman who leads one of the many powerful gangs terrorizing Haiti claims he wants to eliminate the social elite in the crisis-stricken country. As the head of the gang alliance known as the “G9 family”, the 46-year-old Barbiquio has become the public face of the violent chaos in the Caribbean nation, which is suffering from severe political and humanitarian distress.
Last week, gang groups announced a union of forces against the government, and took control of the airport, the police academy and the prisons. Thousands of prisoners escaped from prison. The streets of the capital are now largely controlled by the gangs. “It is not possible for a small group of rich people who live in mansions to decide the fate of people who live in working-class neighborhoods,” Barbiquio said on Tuesday this week, surrounded by journalists, with people wearing masks next to him. “We must all unite. Either Haiti will be heaven for all of us, or it will be hell for all of us,” he added, promising that a civil war would break out if Prime Minister Ariel Henri did not resign.
Yesterday, the Security Council called on Henry, who is currently in Puerto Rico, to reach a “political agreement”, but did not urge him to resign, despite Charizier’s demands. Henri has held the position of Prime Minister since the assassination of President Juvenal Moises in 2021. When the impeachment attempt broke out in Haiti, Henri was in Kenya, as part of his efforts to establish a multinational force that would be mobilized to restore order to Haiti. Since the takeover of the Port-au-France airport, he cannot land in Haiti itself. On Tuesday, his request to go to the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighbor with which it shares the island of Hispaniola, was denied. It is not clear how long he intends to stay in Puerto Rico.
This is not the first time that the policeman turned gangster made headlines. In 2022, as head of the G9 gang alliance, he blockaded Haiti’s oil terminal for weeks, paralyzing fuel distribution and deepening the country’s collapse. The siege of the oil terminal led to calls for a multinational intervention force to help the overwhelmed local police restore order. The hoped-for power did not arrive.
In a clear sign of the power of Barbiquio’s influence, in October 2022 he appeared at the top of the UN’s list of sanctions targets against the armed gangs in Haiti, which included travel restrictions, asset freezes and an arms embargo. Despite the sanctions, “Barbiquio continued to engage in actions that threaten the peace, security and stability of Haiti” , according to the committee of experts responsible for overseeing UN sanctions. The commission’s report details a variety of criminal activities that the gangs engage in in the territory they control, including in the capital, Port-au-France. The G9 alliance includes more than a thousand members, most of whom were formerly police officers, security guards and street boys. The gangs are accused of murder, robbery, extortion , rape, assassination, drug trafficking and kidnapping.
The UN sanctions experts highlight the involvement of Barbiquio in the massacre that took place in the suburb of Saline near Port-au-France in 2018. He planned the La Saline attack and participated in it while he was still a police officer of the Haitian National Police. 71 people were murdered in the massacre. “The victims , including children, were taken from their homes, executed, and their bodies were set on fire, chopped up and given to animals for food,” said the sanctions notice issued by the United States in the year of the massacre. Barbeque enjoyed the support of two senior officials in the administration of the then president, Juvenal Moises, who was assassinated in 2021 .
But the leader of the gangs rejects the claims against him: “I am not a gangster, and I will never be,” he said in an interview with Al-Jazeera in 2021, claiming that he was “fighting for social change.”
