It is one of Haiti’s most violent and impoverished neighborhoods, a no-go zone next to the Haitian Parliament that has become ground zero in a resurgence of gang-related and possibly politically motivated violence.
Now six months after dozens of people were tortured and killed in the worst massacre in Haiti in more than a decade, an internal Haiti police investigation report obtained by the Miami Herald provides the first official account of some of the atrocities that occurred in Port-au-Prince’s La Saline neighborhood during four days of carnage in mid-November.
During that period, Nov. 13-17, men, women and even children as young as 4 were shot to death, their bodies then fed to dogs and pigs. Women were raped and set on fire, as was a police officer, Juwon Durosier. The culprits: bandits tied to gang conflicts over control of a sprawling outdoor market where protection rackets are the norm, but also guns-for-hire by powerful politicians and well-heeled businessmen seeking to control votes in the run-up to upcoming legislative and mayoral elections.
“Among other things that show the cruelty of the killers is the murder of infants such as Geralson Belance, a baby of only 10 months old, who was cowardly lynched and whose remains were taken away in a sack by his killers,” police said.
Testimony from scores of other victims and their close relatives, compiled during the investigation carried out by the judicial police’s Bureau of Criminal Affairs, paints an equally disturbing image of the depths of the atrocities, which have been the subject of several human-rights investigations in Haiti but, so far, have resulted in little accountability from the government.
Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald.