In November 2018, armed gangs entered the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of La Saline, which was known for its anti-government organizing, and carried out a horrific massacre. Gang members killed at least 70 people, including children and an infant. Some of the attackers wore police uniforms and arrived in government vehicles.
My organization, the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti (RNDDH), interviewed witnesses who said state officials had helped make the attacks possible. The witnesses, who participated in the meeting, reported that Richard Duplan, then-President Jovenel Moïse’s delegate for the capital region, and Fednel Monchéry, who was then director-general of the Interior Ministry, had met with a gang leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, who spearheaded the attack. They reported that the officials provided the gang leader with weapons, police uniforms, and government vehicles including police trucks to attack La Saline.
All those men are still free. A Haitian investigative judge charged both officials and the gang leader, among dozens of others, with crimes related to the attack — but none has ever stood trial, despite a United Nations investigation and U.S. sanctions. In Haiti, even the most brazen and public of crimes rarely lead to justice.
Now, with international support, the Haitian government is creating two specialized courts designed to prosecute complex crimes like the massacre at La Saline, including corruption, money laundering, gang financing, gang massacres, and rape. These courts offer Haiti a chance to begin breaking the networks of corruption and gang violence that have fueled the country’s crisis, creating a rare opportunity to change its trajectory. This effort is especially urgent as the new U.N.-backed Gang Suppression Force deploys, because arresting gang members is futile without a justice system capable of detaining, trying, and convicting them.
But even before the new specialized courts have been established, they face two fundamental obstacles. A recent government decree could strip them of jurisdiction over Haiti’s top leaders. And some of the judges and prosecutors named to staff the courts have been linked with the very corruption, gang collusion, and illegal exchanges of favors they are expected to root out. The danger is that these new courts will never hold powerful Haitians accountable – producing yet another internationally backed failure.
It’s possible to avoid that by confronting both problems now.
Clarify Jurisdiction and Vet Judges Properly
The first challenge is jurisdiction. The previous transition government passed a decree in December requiring current and former high-level officials to be tried before a High Court of Justice. The problem is that this court does not currently exist; nor is there a parliament, whose vote is needed to initiate prosecutions. If the decree stands, cases against the country’s most powerful officials could be diverted away from the specialized courts and disappear into legal limbo.
To show he is serious about fighting corruption and impunity, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé should revoke the decree. As long as it remains in place, the kinds of cases that these new courts are intended to try could remain beyond their reach.
The second challenge is ensuring that the people entrusted with the new courts are fit for the job. The judicial oversight body is now vetting the judges and prosecutors who were originally named to staff the courts by the minister of justice, the prime minister, and the judicial oversight body, the Superior Council of the Judiciary. The vetting process deserves close scrutiny, especially as some of the appointees have been linked to impropriety.
Bernard Saint-Vil’s tenure as chief judge of Port-au-Prince, for instance, has included cases involving government corruption and gang violence that repeatedly stalled. RNDDH found that more than 23 thefts of evidence and case files occurred in his court between 2018 and 2020, with signs of insider involvement; Saint-Vil failed to investigate or bring the culprits to justice.
Another judge named to the new courts, Raymond Jean Michel, was Saint-Vil’s predecessor as chief judge of Port-au-Prince until he was suspended by the judiciary’s governing body for administrative negligence. He was found to have improperly handled the case of a politically connected alleged kidnapper, leading to the man’s release. More recently, Jean Michel presided over the appellate panel that dismissed corruption charges against former Customs Director-General Romel Bell on procedural grounds.
Addressing Impunity
These men are leading figures in an existing system that has repeatedly avoided justice. RNDDH has documented more than 60 gang massacres since 2018, but no one has been convicted for these atrocities. In fact, my staff has not identified any gang member convicted of any kidnapping, killing, or rape in that period.
A decade after the first report by the Haitian Senate on the massive PetroCaribe corruption scandal, involving the squandering of billions of dollars of public funds, no one has been convicted. In a separate study, RNDDH found that, of 166 corruption cases transferred to the courts between 2006 and 2024, only four resulted in judgments.
To give these new courts a fighting chance, Haiti’s minister of justice and the Superior Council of the Judiciary, as well as the country’s international partners, should insist on appointing judges and prosecutors whose records show results.
The vetting committee of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, which assesses the fitness of judges to hold office, previously documented serious concerns about Saint-Vil in a 2023 report obtained by RNDDH. The report noted that back in 2006, the Ministry of Justice found that Saint-Vil had released two suspects “under questionable circumstances,” and the committee recommended that he be stripped of all cases pending a deeper review and a formal corruption investigation. The committee also documented allegations made over six years by judges, litigants, and RNDDH that Saint-Vil manipulated cases by steering them to favored judges and attempting to influence outcomes.
Despite these findings, the Superior Council of the Judiciary recertified Saint-Vil and he remains the chief judge today.
This time around, anyone found to have ties to corruption and criminality must be disqualified. And replacements should be identified based on demonstrated integrity and effectiveness.
International partners are investing in these courts, and they should help ensure that they can achieve their goals. U.S. and other officials should press for revocation of the High Court decree, demand transparent appointments and rigorous vetting, and ensure that credible evidence of misconduct among judges and prosecutors leads to their disqualification. They should also support a formal role for Haitian civil society in overseeing the vetting process and the functioning of the courts.
The success of these new courts will be measured by whether they prosecute the people who have long appeared untouchable, including the architects of the massacre at La Saline. Whether that happens depends on the choices made now.
