A federal jury in Washington, D.C., has found a former influential Haitian gang leader guilty of orchestrating the abduction of 16 American citizens in 2021, holding them for over two months.
Germine Joly, identified by authorities as the leader of Haiti’s 400 Mawozo gang, faces sentencing later this year after the verdict reached on Friday.
Despite Joly’s claim of no involvement with the gang, he had previously been sentenced to 35 years in prison last year, after admitting guilt to charges of weapon smuggling and laundering ransom from the large-scale kidnapping.
Haitian police arrested Joly in 2014, and he was sentenced to life in prison in 2018. Authorities said he still directed gang operations from prison, including the October 2021 kidnapping of 16 Americans, including five children, and a Canadian who worked with the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries. The children were ages 6 and 3 and 8 months old.
The gang initially demanded $1 million each for the hostages or, alternatively, the release of Joly from prison. The first hostages were released in November 2021, with a $350,000 ransom eventually paid for the release of the remaining captives.
The Haitian government extradited Joly in 2022.
Joly, known as “Yonyon,” was co-leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, which translates roughly to “400 simpletons.” It controls part of Croix-des-Bouquets, a neighborhood in the eastern region of the Port-au-Prince capital and surrounding areas. The gang also operates along a route that connects the capital with the border city of Jimaní in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
The gang is still led by Joseph Wilson, best known as “Lanmò San Jou,” which means “death has no date,” and it is an ally of G-Pep, a gang federation that is now part of a powerful gang coalition known as “Viv Ansanm.”
