Gangs in Haiti sought weapons smuggled from South Florida to influence elections at home

When a Miami weapons buyer for a powerful Haitian gang inquired why the group needed the guns he had been asked to illegally purchase from South Florida shops, the response was simple.

“Something to do with elections,” the buyer, Walder St. Louis, testified this week in the federal weapons-smuggling conspiracy trial of one of Haiti’s most notorious gang leaders.

Speaking through a Haitian-Creole translator in a Washington, D.C., courtroom, St. Louis, 35, didn’t elaborate on that particular purchase. But his testimony offered more insight into the tight grip that the man on trial, Germine Joly, known as Yonyon, had on the infamous 400 Mawozo gang even when he was in prison in Haiti.

St. Louis said the comment tying smuggled guns to influencing Haitian elections came from Eliande Tunis, a Pompano Beach resident who was also charged in the case and who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to weapons-smuggling charges.

“The game has changed. Everything has changed,” St. Louis said Tunis told him during one of their conversations about the arms purchase. St. Louis then told the courtroom how powerful the gang, and Tunis, had become: “She has senators working with her... with Yonyon. She has VIP connections to the police.”

Tunis, whom St. Louis described as Joly’s girlfriend, managed and directed the weapons purchases, according to the 48-count indictment against her. The guns were actually purchased in South Florida by St. Louis and another co-conspirator, Jocelyn Dor, 31. Both men pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. export laws by smuggling firearms and ammunition to the 400 Mawozo gang and face as much as 20 years in prison.

On Wednesday Joly, 31, himself pleaded guilty to the same 48-count indictment related to conspiring to smuggle weapons to Haiti and launder kidnapping ransom proceeds. As with Tunis, the government is seeking life behind bar for Joly.

Joly’s gang’s efforts to obtain weapons in connection to elections comes as no surprise to Pierre Esperance, a longtime human-rights advocate in Haiti. Haiti’s last elections were in 2016 and new ones are long overdue.

“They want to have their people elected to Parliament so that they can be protected,” Esperance said. “The members of 400 Mawozo are always saying that they have relations with people in politics. So it’s not surprising they wanted to have access to guns so they can control the polls.”

The interaction between politics, violence and control of territory has long defined Haiti’s political landscape, dating as far back as the late 1950s when President-for-Life Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier employed the Tonton Macoutes, a repressive militia whose main job was to stamp out threats against the dictatorial regime.

More than three decades after the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, gangs and guns continue to rule a volatile Haiti. They are used to support politicians, intimidate opponents, collect electoral votes and force the outcome of disputed elections.

“In the 2010-2011 elections, and in 2015-2016, guns played an important role in determining the vote,” said Esperance, who runs the National Human Rights Defense Network and has been involved in human rights in Haiti since the mid ‘90s.

U.S. Justice Department officials in their indictment contend that starting in September 2021 Joly, along with Florida residents St. Louis, Tunis and Dor, “knowingly and willingly” conspired to export firearms and ammunition from the United States to Haiti to support 400 Mawozo’s gang activities.

At least 24 firearms, including high-powered semi-automatic rifles, were purchased by the co-defendants to help the gang, U.S. prosecutors said in court as they displayed some of the weapons throughout the trial. The purchases were made in the months leading to Oct. 17, 2021, the day after 17 American and Canadian missionaries were kidnapped by the gang and held for $1 million ransom each.

The timing of kidnappings and some of the arms purchases coincided with deepening turmoil in Haiti following the July 7, 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The power vacuum left by Moïse’s death led to a dramatic expansion of already flourishing armed gangs. As the gangs engaged in a deadly fight for control over territory, some experts on Haiti have argued that they were also fighting to control electoral decisions.

At the time of his assassination, Moïse was under pressure from the Biden administration to hold new elections. After the president’s slaying the country was left with just 10 elected officials, whose terms ended six months later, and the pressure to hold elections has only grown.

The power and influence of gangs has grown as well. The United Nations estimates that there are at least 200 criminal groups currently operating in Haiti who now control at least 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The relationship between the gangs and politics was highlighted in a recent report by a panel of experts tasked by the U.N. Security Council with helping the organization decide who in Haitian society should be singled out for sanctions.

“Politicians and economic elites, seeking votes and the protection of their wealth, respectively, have tended to compensate gangs with money and other resources for offering those services, a practice that has gradually enriched and empowered gangs,” the panel said in its 156-page report sent to the Council last fall.

While gangs have become increasingly autonomous from their traditional backers, the panel warned that the relationship may be “mobilized at short notice.”

One of Haiti’s largest gangs, 400 Mawozo is also considered to be among the most dangerous and best-armed. In the U.N. experts’ report, the panel said reviews of videos and police records indicate that gang members possess pistols, revolvers, 12-gauge shotguns and powerful semi-automatic rifles. In addition to kidnappings, the gangs run extortion rings and control access to a key border crossing for commerce between Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic.

“One governmental source indicated that 400 Mawozo has around 70 rifles and 45 handguns,” the panel said.

Joly’s prosecution in the United States comes at a critical juncture in U.S.-Haiti policy. The U.S.-financed national police in Haiti is quickly losing officers — the U.N. reported the force lost over 1,600 cops just in the past year, many of whom have left for the U.S. A court in Kenya last week blocked the deployment of 1,000 police officers who are supposed to be the backbone of a Multinational Security Support mission led by the East African nation. And gang-related violence continues to escalate.

At the same time, the Biden administration, which has been pushing for an armed intervention in Haiti, is increasingly under pressure to stem the flow of arms into the country from Florida’s seaports and to support a new transitional government in the Caribbean nation.

Although the U.S. is not pushing for elections at the moment, that remains a goal. U.S. officials continue to push members of Haiti’s political class and civil society to break the ongoing political gridlock and come to a consensus over governance so the country can return to democratic order.

Esperance, the human-rights advocate who once opposed a foreign intervention and has since changed his mind as the gang violence worsens, said any election held now would in effect turn the country over to the gangs.

“The gangs have control everywhere,” he said. “If you hold an election, they are the ones who will elect the next deputies, the next president, because only their candidates will be able to campaign.”