National Center of Haitian Apostolate
REFLEXIONS - THIRD SUNDAY ORDINARY TIME YEAR B Jan 21, 2024
Jonah 3, 1-10; Psalm 25; 1 Cor. 7, 29-41; Mark 1, 14-20
Msgr. Pierre André Pierre
On this third Sunday in the Ordinary Time of liturgical year B, the Church invites us to meditate on the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The first action he takes is to call for disciples: Simon and Andrew, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were throwing their nets into the sea or repairing them. They leave everything and follow Jesus. For the moment, he only asks them for their goodwill, their character, and their free consent. They are fishermen. They will become fishers of men. Their presence around Jesus signals that the future of the Kingdom of God is looming on the horizon.
The so-called synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) begin the mission in Galilee. The Gospel of St John told us last Sunday that it all began on the banks of the Jordan River in Judea. In either case, it is Jesus who chooses, invites, and takes the initiative to add men to carry out the mission.
The purpose of the call is first to be with Jesus. Those called will become disciples. The time of fulfillment has come. The Kingdom of God is at hand. They will repent and believe in the Gospel. They will listen to it every day. They will eat and drink with Jesus. They will be associated with his different missionary activities. They will believe in the Good News of Salvation for all. They will learn from the Lord Jesus himself what they will later witness during their mission. At the Master's school, they will learn to experience and know the love of God, which has no measure.
In today's first reading, Jonah carries out the mission that God has entrusted to him, after many adventures, resistance, and fear in his stomach. Jonah does not believe that God loves all people, including aliens, and that He is the God of the universe. His presence is not limited to a place, a country, or a religion. He is universal.
In the second reading, Paul reminds the Corinthians that the very near future of man is in the resurrected Christ. Too many tend to see this world as the only thing that counts. He recommends repentance and distancing oneself from passing goods. With Christ, the Kingdom of God is already inaugurated. It is not yet fully accomplished, but it is already there. The real priority is to be entirely focused on the definitive encounter with Christ. Like the first disciples, let us be prepared to give up our former way of life and follow Jesus unreservedly
This January 21, 2024, is also called: Sunday of the Word of God. It was established by Pope Francis in the year 2019. It is an invitation for all Christians to put the Bible, the Word of God, at the center of their lives. It is also the Sunday of the Annual Weekly Prayer for Christian Unity. With one accord, with all our Christian brothers and sisters around the world, and all people of goodwill, let us turn to the Lord and His Word. He can change our hearts. He will teach us the way of humility. He will fulfill all the desires of our hearts.
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Msgr. Pierre André PIERRE
High-Profile gang leader faces trial in US for arms trafficking linked to Haiti violence
Dominicantoday.com - Haiti.- Germine Joly, known as “Yonyon,” a notorious Haitian gang leader, is facing trial in Washington, DC, on charges related to arms trafficking and laundering kidnapping ransoms. Extradited to the United States in May 2022, Joly is accused of smuggling firearms into Haiti, violating U.S. export laws, and using ransom proceeds to fund gang violence. This includes AK47 and M1A rifles, and ammunition capable of piercing police vehicles, sourced from gun dealers in Florida.
The trial of Joly, who once directed his gang’s operations from behind bars in Haiti, is expected to shed light on the operation of Haiti’s armed groups and the link between U.S. arms trafficking and gang violence in Haiti. Approximately 200 gangs control about 80% of Haiti’s capital, with their influence now spreading to rural areas.
Joly’s case, involving the importation of weapons purchased with kidnapping ransoms, highlights the transnational implications of local gang violence. The trial is seen as the United States’ response to gang-related violence in Haiti, especially following the high-profile kidnapping of 16 Americans and one Canadian by Joly’s gang, 400 Mawozo, in 2021.
Several other leaders of Haiti-based gangs are wanted in the U.S. for kidnappings since 2021. Joly is charged alongside three Florida residents involved in the purchase and smuggling of firearms for 400 Mawozo. Among them, Eliande Tunis is expected to plead guilty to related charges, while the status of the others remains uncertain.
The trial will also explore the connection between Joly, his gang, and the kidnappings they conducted, including that of the U.S.-based missionaries. The judge has ruled that the evidence of these connections is intrinsic to the case, as the government needs to prove that the firearms were bought with kidnapping ransoms.
This high-profile case underscores the complex interplay between local gang activities in Haiti and international crime, particularly the role of arms trafficking from the United States in exacerbating violence and insecurity in Haiti.
Haitian gang leader charged in kidnapping of American missionaries
By
Louis Casiano, Fox News
The Justice Department has charged the leader of a violent Haitian gang in connection with the kidnappings of 16 American Christian missionaries last year, officials said Tuesday.
Joly Germine, 29, who is also known as “Yonyon,” leads the 400 Mawozo gang and is the first person charged by federal prosecutors with having any involvement in the kidnapping. He was extradited to the United States last week and faces separate firearms tracking charges.
“This case shows that the Justice Department will be relentless in our efforts to track down anyone who kidnaps a U.S. citizen abroad,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “We will utilize the full reach of our law enforcement authorities to hold accountable anyone responsible for undermining the safety of Americans anywhere in the world.”
A total of 17 people – 12 adults and five minors –were kidnaped on Oct. 16, 2021 after visiting an orphanage in Ganthier, just outside the capital of Port-au-Prince. Aside from one Canadian citizen, the group comprised Americans.
Although he was imprisoned during the kidnappings, Germine directed the gang’s operations, which included ransom negotiations, according to an indictment. One of his goals was to get the Haitian government to release him from prison.
While in prison, Germine was in regular contact with the captors, the Justice Department said.
Twelve of the captive missionaries escaped during a daring overnight caper, eluding their kidnappers and walking for miles over difficult, moonlit terrain with an infant and other children in tow. The group navigated by stars to reach safety after a two-month kidnapping ordeal, according to officials with the Christian Aid Ministries, the Ohio-based agency that the missionaries work for.
Their captors initially demanded $1 million for each hostage, prosecutors said. It was not clear if any ransom was paid.
The 12 hostages who escaped were flown to Florida on a U.S. Coast Guard flight, and later reunited with the five hostages who had been released earlier.
He is expected to appear in federal court Wednesday.
Haiti gang leader boasted he was ‘king of kings,’ just needed bullets to wipe out country
By
Updated January 18, 2024
WASHINGTON
Five days before a South Florida woman was arrested in Miami for shipping high-caliber weapons to one of Haiti’s largest and most violent gangs, she got an ominous warning: “They will catch you.”
The October 2021 warning came from inside Haiti’s National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, where Germine Joly, a notorious gang leader more commonly known by the nickname “Yonyon” was an inmate. Joly had just received a text with photos of weapons buried underneath clothes inside a blue barrel from Eliande Tunis, a Pompano Beach resident who had been managing the gang’s arms and ammunition purchases from gun dealers in Florida.
The text was among 3,415 messages Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Seifert highlighted Thursday in opening statements at the start of Joly’s trial in federal court in Washington, D.C. Joly and Tunis, according to the prosecutor, also held 32 hours of phone conversations between them while Joly was incarcerated. Their conversations also occurred while 17 missionaries from an Ohio-based charity, Christian Aid Ministries, were being held captive by Joly’s 400 Mawozo gang on the eastern outskirts of the capital.
Although Joly is not on trial for the kidnapping of the missionaries in Haiti in October 2021, his role coordinating the brazen abduction is featured prominently in his weapons-smuggling conspiracy trial. As the first gang leader connected to the kidnapping to be extradited to the U.S., Joly is charged with 48 counts relating to violating U.S. export laws, weapons purchases and international money laundering. The most serious of the charges, violating U.S. export laws, carries up to 20 years in prison.
On Wednesday, co-defendant Tunis pleaded guilty to the entire 48-count indictment rather than go to trial. Though her attorney sked for a sentence between 51 and 63 months, the government is pushing for life imprisonment with a fine between $50,000 and $500,000. Two other defendants, Jocelyn Dor and Walder St. Louis, will also avoid trials. Dor pleaded guilty to six charges, including violating weapons export laws, as part of a plea agreement, and St. Louis will testify on behalf of the government against Joly. It remains unclear what charges he is pleading guilty to.
In laying out their weapons-smuggling case against Joly, who has waived his right for a jury and will be tried by the judge, Seifert described 400 Mawozo’s criminal business as a cycle of taking hostages for ransom, transferring the money to the U.S. to buy guns and having them smuggled into Haiti. Those guns, often powerful enough to pierce walls and police vehicles, were then used to grab more hostages and take control of more territory inside the impoverished country.
As part of the government’s case, prosecutors showed a video of Joly’s birthday celebration inside the Haiti prison. He was wearing designer Fendi clothes, and during the clip, he said, his designer outfit was “worth thousands of dollars and bought in the U.S.”
The image, which went viral in Haiti at the time and during the missionaries’ 10th day in captivity, is far different from the portrait Joly’s defense presented during its presentation before U.S. District Judge John D. Bates.
Just a farmer
Attorney Elita Amato said Joly, 30, was just a farmer from Haiti’s rural countryside and not the dangerous gangster who directed arms purchases from behind prison walls. He was raised by “a nurturing family” of aunts and uncles in Haiti, she said, and given land to grow corn, peas and beans when he was old enough.
He was also a commodities trader, Amato asserted, describing him as someone who gave back to his country by providing land for farmers to work. He owned tracts of land across Haiti and had relatives in the 400 Mawozo gang.
Amato said Joly had “limited access” to the outside from prison and did not direct gun purchases. As she spoke, Joly, wearing a black suit and tie, listened in with the help of interpreters.
But Seifert said Joly was very much in control of 400 Mawozo’s criminal operations despite his imprisonment. He had access to multiple unmonitored cell phones while in the National Penitentiary, which he used to direct operations outside, including how much ransom to demand from families of kidnapped victims, where to transfer the money and what guns and ammunition to purchase from Florida gun dealers, she said.
He was able to do so, the prosecutor said, because he had help from the likes of Tunis, a member of the gang living in South Florida who managed the arms purchases using two straw buyers, Jocelyn Dor and Walder St. Louis, who falsified purchase documents and shipped the weapons to Haiti. The guns were sometimes dismantled and hidden underneath clothing, shoes and Gatorade. Once, a shipment was marked “seafood.”
Those guns, the prosecution asserts, were purchased under orders from Joly with part of ransom money from kidnapped Americans. During one five-month period in which 400 Mawozo abducted several U.S. citizens at gunpoint as they traveled in its Croix-des-Bouquets territory, there were at least 21 wire transfers meant for gun purchases, prosecutors said. The money was sent from Haiti to the U.S., between May and October 2021, and totaled $37,500.
The money was sometimes broken up into smaller amounts to avoid suspicion, and Joly, prosecutors said, kept track of all the transactions. Some of the money was transferred within hours of Joly issuing directions about the weapons.
The money went to Tunis as well as Dor and St. Louis in the U.S., the prosecution said.
Among the guns Joly told Tunis to buy was a Barrett M82A1, .50-cal. sniper rifle, powerful enough to pierce walls. Joly, in one of his exchanges with Tunis, said he could use the high-powered rifle “to do bad things.”
“These are big guns. You only need bullets to wipe out the whole country,” he said.
In their correspondence, Joly and Tunis didn’t just decide on weapons purchases and wire transfers, the prosecution said, Joly also boasted about kidnappings carried out by his gang.
In one instance, he told her, “We held him hostage right away.... We already cashed in.”
‘I’m the king of kings’
Among the government’s witnesses, some of whom will have their identities shielded, are experts on weapons and the U.S. gun control export laws. The government will also put on the witness stand a Floridian who was the shipper of the guns into Haiti. Prosecutors said he will testify that he picked up barrels from Tunis’ house and put them on boats bound for Haiti. When he called her to complain about the weight of one of the barrels, Tunis said, “It’s rice.”
Sources in Haiti have long contended that Joly has relatives inside the gang who kept his No. 2, Lanmò Sanjou, also known as Joseph Wilson, in check as he received ransom payments and extortion payoffs.
While the gang was temporarily weakened after Joly’s May 2022 extradition to the United States, it has regained strength, raiding businesses in the Croix-des-Bouquets area and clashing with rival gangs. The violence led to the deaths of two children on Christmas Day when they were killed along with two adults when the gang carried out a deadly attack.
The day the missionaries were stopped at gunpoint as they returned from visiting a nearby orphanage in Ganthier, Joly was in prison. Still, he and Lanmò Sanjou spoke on the phone 10 times that day, Seifert said during her opening statement.
Lanmò Sanjou, whose name translates in English to “Death doesn’t know when it’s coming,” conducted the ransom negotiations. During at least one instance of a kidnapping, he told the victim, “Look me in the eyes. I am the one holding you,” Seifert said.
Seifert played a clip showing Lanmò Sanjou saying, “If I don’t get what I need, you see these Americans? I’d rather kill them. As I was coming here, I left a big weapon pointed at each of their heads.”
Lanmò Sanjou eventually demanded $1 million each for the hostages, which included five children. He didn’t get the full $17 million, but a ransom was paid, sources told the Miami Herald. The missionaries were freed after spending 61 days in captivity and their release was made to look like an escape.
Lanmò Sanjou is among seven leaders of five Haiti-based gangs who is wanted by the FBI’s Miami field office for the kidnappings of U.S. citizens in Haiti since 2021. Seifert said he ran the hostage-taking for 400 Mawozo and also directed what guns to buy. “Whenever we have to buy guns, Lanmò would come up with the money,” Joly said in a communication.
But in another call and text message, Seifert said, Joly also made his role clear: He boasted “I’m king now. I’m the king of kings.”
# This story was originally published January 18, 2024, 4:55 PM.
Shirsho Dasgupta is an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald DC Bureau. His stories, ranging from financial crime to Florida’s prison system, have received multiple awards and citations from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Overseas Press Club, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, the Society of Professional Journalists (Florida and DC chapters) and others. He holds Master’s degrees in English and Journalism.
# Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.