The “royal family” and two straw gun purchasers of the largest Haitian gang all pleaded guilty or were sentenced in the U.S. over the last six weeks as part of a federal case that may have set the stage for rival gang leader Jimmy “Barbeque” Chérizier’s rise to power in the Caribbean nation.

Chérizier and his gang federation “G9 Families and Allies” claimed responsibility for this weekend’s jailbreak of 4,000 inmates and the accompanying bloodbath, which has claimed at least nine lives since Thursday and forced the U.S. to issue urgent warnings to leave Haiti “as soon as possible” and Canada to temporarily close its embassy.

Before “Barbeque” was at the top of the Haitian food chain, there were Joly “Yonyon” Germine and Eliande Tunis, the self-proclaimed “king” and “queen” of the 400 Mawozo gang, which is notorious for its armed kidnappings of U.S. citizens. 

The couple, along with two other suspects, were living in Florida and rounded up by U.S. authorities for the October 2021-armed abduction and ransom of 16 U.S. citizens and one Canadian, including five children as young as eight months, during a missionary trip to an orphanage. 

Maria Isabel Salvador, special representative of the secretary-general for Haiti and head of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, told the U.N. Security Council at the end of January that there were 8,400 victims of gang violence in 2023, a 122% increase from 2022, and most of the victims were targeted in the capital. 

“According to a conservative estimate by the (U.N.) Panel, at least 250,000 Haitian nationals were forcibly displaced internally or have left the country during the reporting period owing to gang violence and economic conditions in Haiti,” the report says. 

And the country’s police force – with fewer than 10,000 officers – is severely undermanned and outgunned, Salvador said. She estimates that the police force needs about 25,000 active officers. 

Citizens take part in a protest near the police station of Petion Ville after Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was murdered on July 8, 2021 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Moise was killed and his wife injured during an attack at their home in the nation’s capital. (Richard Pierrin/Getty Images)

‘Gangs have undergone a radical evolution’: report

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, an independent civil-society organization, said in a Feb. 12 report that Haiti’s gangs “have been profoundly transformed.”

“Over the past years, gangs have undergone a radical evolution, going from rather unstructured actors dependent on resources provided by public or private patronage to violent entrepreneurs who have been able to convert their territorial power into governance capabilities,” Global Initiative said. 

“This shift has been fueled by the gangs’ unprecedented access to firearms and the Haitian state’s inability to halt their expansion, professionalization, and propensity to impose their rule over ever-larger territories, as well as by ongoing collusion by elements of the country’s political and economic elites.”

Stéphane Dujarric, a UN spokesperson, said on Monday that the last five days of violence highlight the need for intervention. 

“We have been talking for months now about how civilians in Haiti and in Port-au-Prince are basically trapped by gang violence,” Dujarric said, according to The Guardian. “Schools are closed, hospitals are not functioning, people are suffering on a daily basis.”