A U.S. jury has found a Haitian gang leader guilty of kidnapping 16 American missionaries in 2021. The missionaries, including five children, were held hostage for more than two months.
Germine Joly, the leader of the gang called 400 Mawozo, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a statement, “This office will fight aggressively to protect Americans who are taken hostage and abused, and to uphold the religious freedoms of our people, including Christians. As the evidence demonstrated, Joly Germine orchestrated a plot that leveraged American Christian missionaries as bargaining chips to try to secure his own release from a Haitian prison.”
“When you commit crimes against Americans in other countries, it makes no difference where you are — we are coming for you,” Pirro said. “Justice may not always be swift but it is certain.”
In 2021, 17 Mennonite missionaries with Christian Aid Ministries, 16 U.S. citizens and one Canadian, were stopped by the gang, robbed, and kidnapped. The gang demanded a ransom of $1 million each for their return, threatening to kill them if the ransom was not paid. The gang later said that they would accept Joly’s release from prison as an exchange for the hostages.
“On November 20, 2021, two hostages were released after one was suffering from life-threatening health conditions. On December 5, 2021, 400 Mawozo released three of the hostages, two adults who had significant medical issues and the six-year-old child, after receiving a $350,000 ransom payment,” the Justice Department explained. “Though the gang had stated they would release all the hostages for the ransom paid, at Germine’s direction, the gang thereafter refused to release any more hostages.”
The remaining hostages were able to escape in December 2021 and walked for five hours through the bush and were received by the FBI.
A January U.N. report revealed that Haiti experienced a 20% rise in killings in 2024 compared to 2023, with 5,600 people left deceased from gang operations.
