BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Police in Haiti have arrested a former senator charged with conspiring against the state and financing criminal organizations for allegedly supporting gang members.
Nenel Cassy was arrested Saturday at a restaurant in Petionville, a wealthy district of the capital, Port-au Prince, Haiti’s National Police said in a post on Facebook. The police shared photos of the former senator in handcuffs, next to heavily armed officers wearing ski masks.
Arrests of high level officials are rare in Haiti, where the government is also struggling to control neighborhoods and villages that have been taken over by gangs.
Cassy was designated as a corrupt actor by the U.S. State Department in 2023. He was accused by Haiti’s police in February of backing gang members who launched deadly attacks on Kenscoff, a neighborhood 10 kilometers (6 miles) outside Port-au-Prince that is home to much of the nation’s elite. Kenscoff had been largely untouched by Haiti’s gang violence until February’s attacks in which dozens of people were killed. The neighborhood is now being targetted by gangs that are trying to seize more territory from Haiti’s government.
On Sunday, Kenscoff’s mayor told The Associated Press that nine workers were kidnapped from an orphanage in that neighborhood by armed men, including a foreign citizen whose nationality has not been confirmed. Mayor Massillon Jean said the attack happened around 2 a.m.
The orpanage that came under attack on Sunday is run by Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, an international charity with offices in Mexico and France that is also known as NPH. It shelters more than 240 children, according to the organization’s website.
Gangs control 90% of Haiti’s capital, according to the United Nations, and in recent months they have been launching attacks on previously peaceful communities.
More than 5,600 people were reported killed in Haiti last year, with gang violence leaving more than 1 million people homeless in recent years, according to the U.N. The UN recorded 185 victims of kidnapping in Haiti between April and June of this year, and said that gangs commit this crime to “subjugate” people in areas under their control.
