Haiti gang boss hints at possible ceasefire – but warns foreign forces they will be treated as ‘invaders’
The head of one of Haiti’s most powerful gangs, and the de-facto head of a consortium of gangs that have brought Port-au-Prince to a standstill has told Sky News he would consider a ceasefire and talks on the political future of the country if they were included.
But Jimmy Cherizier, known universally as “Barbecue”, has predicted that more violence is imminent, adding that a recent halt in the fighting is purely a technical pause.
“There is nothing calm, but when you’re fighting you have to know when to advance and when to retreat,” he said.
“I think every day that passes we are coming up with a new strategy so we can advance, but there’s nothing calm.
“In the days that are coming things will get worse than they are now…” he told me sitting in an alleyway in his stronghold.
Political parties in Haiti, overseen by CARICOM, the Caribbean economic union of countries, are trying to form a transitional council that will take over the running of the country after the Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is currently in the United States, stands down.
Cherizier has said they “respect CARICOM a lot” but dismissed the process as unrepresentative of the needs of the ordinary people and a smokescreen to allow “corrupt politicians” and what he calls “corrupt oligarchs” to continue running the country.
The only way the situation can move on, he insisted, is if the peace process includes him and his gang coalition.
“If the international community comes with a detailed plan where we can sit together and talk, but they do not impose on us what we should decide, I think that the weapons could be lowered,” he added.
“We don’t believe in killing people and massacring people, we believe in dialogue, we have weapons in our hand and it’s with the weapons that we must liberate this country.”
Jimmy Cherizier speaks to Sky’s Stuart Ramsay
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A vortex of violence and poverty
Haiti has been paralysed by weeks of violence that has seen whole districts burnt to the ground, tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes, while murder, rape, and gun battles are a daily occurrence.
Port-au-Prince is 80% controlled by the gangs and normal life has virtually stopped.
To get to Barbecue we were guided down a now-deserted motorway pockmarked with burnt out sections of tarmac and abandoned and burnt-out vehicles.
It’s one of the main economic highways in the capital, and now totally under his control.
We were told that their snipers were watching us, and to drive slowly, and follow our guide’s every move.
We then turned off the main road and drove through a warren of backstreets, to a meeting point where we were greeted by a group of armed gunmen in balaclavas.
One of the main economic highways in the capital is now totally under Barbecue’s control
I’ve met Barbecue before, and I knew where we were going, but everything was different this time – that deserted highway was free flowing the last time I was here. Now it is a barricaded battlefield.
Another difference is that last time we met, he wasn’t too keen on us filming his armed guards, but now he positively wanted us to see them, and was carrying two weapons himself.
The reason is simple. He is at war, and he wants the authorities and his enemies here to know that it is a war.
He’s not responsible for all the violence sweeping across Haiti’s capital but, be under no doubt, he is at the centre of it and his fighters are never far away.
Barbecue sees himself as a revolutionary for the people, and he rails against corrupt politicians and oligarchs.
He has dismissed all the efforts under way here to form a transitional council that will govern Haiti.
“We believe in dialogue, we are for dialogue, but this political class that is here now is not here for dialogue, the reason is that they don’t carry Haiti in their hearts the same way that we do.
“The political class say they are excluding bandits, that men with guns are not in it, but this is a way for them to revive the same system, because the system has reached its end.
Stuart Ramsay eyewitness Haiti turmoil
“The divide between rich and poor is too vast, in the whole world there is a divide between rich and poor, but the way it’s done in Haiti is indecent,” he told me.
He suggested though, that he is open to some form of negotiations as long as they’re represented.
“We are ready for all solutions as long as Haitians are at the table, we are ready to sit and talk with everyone, because we are not proud of what is happening in this country…”
I asked him if he accepts that if they want to have talks, they’ll have to put down their weapons.
“The weapons will be lowered when they need to be lowered,” he replied.
“At the moment we haven’t got to the point where we should put down our weapons, because the people here don’t want to listen to reason.
“We have been hearing about dialogue for more than two or three years.
“We’ve been asking for everyone to sit down and talk to the people with guns, and no one heard us. Today we have reached the point where we are advancing and our objective is clear.”
Surrounded by well-armed gunmen, Barbecue took me for a walk around some of his newly acquired territory.
He took us through the roadblocks of buses they’ve put in place to stop police raids here.
He says the last major police assault was eight days ago and he’s not sure when there will be another.
Inside his territory, despite the poverty, life is relatively peaceful and organised.
Barbecue said we should see food distribution taking place inside his community.
And unlike what we have seen in other parts of Port-au-Prince, the queues for the food Barbecue gets brought in are orderly.
People queue for food in Barbecue’s territory
The essential difference is the people waiting in line know there’s enough food and water supplies for the whole community. They just need to wait.
The issue here though is whether a poor area, controlled by a gang boss, is getting better treatment than poor areas controlled by the government.
This is the source of Barbecue’s strength.
Cherizier, a former policeman, sees himself as a sort of revolutionary freedom fighter in the style of Che Guevara, and a Robin Hood type figure for his community.
For much of the international community though, and many in Haiti, he is a criminal gang leader.
Watched on by his well-armed and battle-hardened soldiers, Barbecue says plans for an international force led by Kenya to impose peace in Port-au-Prince will lead to more violence, whoever is in charge.
When I met him last in January 2023 I asked about foreign forces. He said at the time innocent people would die if they came in. I wondered if he still held the same view.
“I believe that just like I said, if the Kenyans come, first of all they will come to commit massacres in the poor communities, because the oligarchs and the corrupt politicians are going to tell them where to go on the pretext that they’re coming to eliminate gangs and bandits, and they’re going to enter the poor communities to commit massacres,” he said.
“We at this moment who have weapons in our hands are not going to allow this.
“It’s evolving. If the Kenyan military or Kenyan police come, whatever, I will consider them as aggressors, we will consider them as invaders, and we do not have to collaborate with any invaders that have come to walk over our independence.”
Barbecue is not only leader of the G9 group of gangs, he is now also the leader of Viv Ansanm (Living Together) revolutionary group, a newly formed gang alliance.
He said he’s trying to reign the more violent gangs in, and that they need to change their ways or risk losing their revolution.
“Viv Ansanm is a collective leadership – I can’t force them. If I use force against them it will be an endless fight, we will never be able to accomplish what we want to against the people who have created this situation,” he explained.
“But every day every day we talk seven or eight times on the phone, and each time we hear on the news that they kidnap someone or something bad is done.
“I always call the guys on the phone to see how together we can correct this, and even they who have been doing it are starting to be conscious that this is bad and that they’re not going to do it anymore.
“But me I just assure myself that I continue talking to them for them to stop and not continue to do it.
“I think in time we will find a solution with a country where there are no kidnappings, without raping and killing people, and in the end we will chase the corrupt politicians and the corrupt oligarchs out of the country.”
Cherizier flies a kite
As we were getting ready to leave Cherizier paused to fly a kite.
It’s an early Easter tradition here. He laughed and joked with his people. He’s an unlikely hero but here in his territory he is.
In truth no ordinary society needs people like Barbecue, but Haiti isn’t normal.
How or when it achieves normality is impossible to predict.
Hamas has said it has “submitted its positive response” to the latest proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza to mediators.
The proposal for a 60-day ceasefire was presented by US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing hard for a deal to end the fighting in Gaza, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to visit the White House next week to discuss a deal.
Mr Trump said Israel had agreed to his proposed ceasefire terms, and he urged Hamas to accept the deal as well.
Hamas’ “positive” response to the proposal had slightly different wording on three issues around humanitarian aid, the status of the Israeli Defence Forces inside Gaza and the language around guarantees beyond the 60-day ceasefire, a source with knowledge of the negotiations revealed.
But the source told Sky News: “Things are looking good.”
A woman cries after her son was killed while on his way to an aid distribution centre. Pic: AP/Jehad Alshrafi
Hamas said it is “fully prepared to immediately enter into a round of negotiations regarding the mechanism for implementing this framework” without elaborating on what needed to be worked out in the proposal’s implementation.
The US said during the ceasefire it would “work with all parties to end the war”.
A Hamas official said on condition of anonymity that the truce could start as early as next week.
An Israeli army tank advances in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel. Pic: AP/Leo Correa
But he added that talks were needed first to establish how many Palestinian prisoners would be released in return for each freed Israeli hostage and to specify the amount of humanitarian aid that will be allowed to enter Gaza during the ceasefire.
He said negotiations on a permanent ceasefire and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in return for the release of the remaining hostages would start on the first day of the truce.
Hamas has been seeking guarantees that the 60-day ceasefire would lead to a total end to the nearly 21-month-old war, which caused previous rounds of negotiations to fail as Mr Netanyahu has insisted that Israel would continue fighting in Gaza to ensure the destruction of Hamas.
The Hamas official said that Mr Trump has guaranteed that the ceasefire will extend beyond 60 days if necessary to reach a peace deal, but there is no confirmation from the US of such a guarantee.
Speaking to journalists on Air Force One, Mr Trump welcomed Hamas’s “positive spirit” to the proposal, adding that there could be a ceasefire deal by next week.
Palestinians dispersing away from tear gas fired at an aid distribution site in Gaza. Pic: AP
A girl mourns the loss of her father, who was killed while heading to an aid distribution hub. Pic: AP/Jehad Alshrafi
Hamas also said it wants more aid to flow through the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies, which comes as the UN human rights officer said it recorded 613 Palestinians killed in Gaza within a month while trying to obtain aid.
Most of them were said to have been killed while trying to reach food distribution points by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, Ravina Shamdasani, said the agency was not able to attribute responsibility for the killings, but added that “it is clear that the Israeli military has shelled and shot at Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points” operated by GHF.
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Palestinians carry aid packages near the GHF distribution centre in Khan Younis. Pic: AP/Abdel Kareem Hana
Ms Shamdasani said that of the total tallied, 509 killings were “GHF-related”, meaning at or near its distribution sites.
The GHF accused the UN of taking its casualty figures “directly from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry” and of trying “to falsely smear our effort”, which echoed statements to Sky News by the executive director of GHF, Johnnie Moore.
Mr Moore called the UN figures a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip.
Behind the efforts to secure the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release is the remarkable story of one man’s unlikely involvement.
His name is Bishara Bahbah, he’s a Harvard-educated economics professor from Phoenix, Arizona.
In April, his phone rang. It was Hamas.
Since that phone call, Dr Bahbah has been living temporarily in Qatar where he is in direct contact with officials from Hamas. He has emerged as an important back-channel American negotiator. But how?
An inauguration party
I first met Dr Bahbah in January. It was the eve of President Trump’s inauguration and a group of Arab-Americans had thrown a party at a swanky restaurant in Washington DC’s Wharf district.
There was a sense of excitement. Arab-Americans were crediting themselves for having helped Trump over the line in the key swing state of Michigan.
Dr Bahbah negotiating with Hamas for the release of Edan Alexander
Despite traditionally being aligned with the Democrats, Arab-Americans had abandoned Joe Biden in large numbers because of his handling of the Gaza war.
I’d reported from Michigan weeks earlier and been struck by the overwhelming support for Trump. The vibe essentially was ‘it can’t get any worse – we may as well give Trump a shot’.
Mingling among diplomats from Middle Eastern countries, wealthy business owners and even the president of FIFA, I was introduced to an unassuming man in his late 60s.
We got talking and shared stories of his birthplace and my adopted home for a few years – Jerusalem.
Dr Bahbah and Trump
He told me that he still has the deed to his family’s 68 dunum (16 acre) Palestinian orchard.
With nostalgia, he explained how he still had his family’s UN food card which shows their allocated monthly rations from their time living in a refugee camp and in the Jerusalem’s old city.
Dr Bahnah left Jerusalem in 1976. He is now a US citizen but told me Jerusalem would always be home.
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Will Trump achieve a Gaza ceasefire?
He echoed the views I had heard in Michigan, where he had spent many months campaigning as the president of Arab-Americans for Trump.
He dismissed my scepticism that Trump would be any better than Biden for the Palestinians.
We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet for lunch a few weeks later.
A connection with Trump
Dr Bahbah invited two Arab-American friends to our lunch. Over burgers and coke, a block from the White House, we discussed their hopes for Gaza under Trump.
The three men repeated what I had heard on the campaign trail – that things couldn’t get any worse for the Palestinians than they were under Biden.
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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open
Trump, they said, would use his pragmatism and transactional nature to create opportunities.
Dr Bahbah displayed to me his own initiative too. He revealed that he got a message to the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to suggest he ought to write a personal letter of congratulations to President Trump.
A letter from Ramallah was on the Oval Office desk on 6 November, a day after the election. It’s the sort of gesture Trump notices.
It was clear to me that the campaigning efforts and continued support of these three wealthy men had been recognised by the Trump administration.
They had become close to key figures in Trump’s team – connections that would, in time, pay off.
There were tensions along the way. When Trump announced he would “own Gaza”, Dr Bahbah was disillusioned.
And then came the AI video of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunning themselves in a Gazan wonderland.
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President shares ‘Trump Gaza’ AI video
“It is provocative and unacceptable,” he told me just after the president posted the video in February.
Trump must have thought it was funny, so he posted it. He loves anything with his name on it.”
Then came the Trump plan to resettle Palestinians out of Gaza. To this, he released a public statement titled Urgent Press Release.
“Arab-Americans for Trump firmly rejects President Donald J Trump’s suggestion to remove – voluntarily or forcibly – Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt and Jordan,” he said.
Letter from Abbas to Trump. Pic: Bishara Bahbah
He then changed the name of his alliance, dropping Trump. It became Arab-Americans for Peace.
I wondered if the wheels were coming off this unlikely alliance.
Was he realising Trump couldn’t or wouldn’t solve the Palestinian issue? But Dr Bahbah maintained faith in the new president.
“I am worried, but at the same time, Trump might be testing the waters to determine what is acceptable…,” he told me in late February as the war dragged on.
“There is no alternative to the two-state solution.”
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He told me that he expected the president and his team to work on the rebuilding of Gaza and work to launch a process that would culminate in the establishment of a Palestinian state, side by side in peace with Israel.
It was, and remains, an expectation at odds with the Trump administration’s official policy.
The phone call
In late April, Dr Bahbah’s phone rang. The man at the other end of the line was Dr Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas.
Dr Bahbah and Dr Hamad had never met – they did not know each other.
But Hamas had identified Dr Bahbah as the Palestinian-American with the most influence in Trump’s administration.
Dr Hamad suggested that they could work together – to secure the release of all the hostages in return for a permanent ceasefire.
Hamas was already using the Qatari government as a conduit to the Americans but Dr Bahbah represented a second channel through which they hoped they could convince President Trump to increase pressure on Israel.
There is a thread of history which runs through this story. It was the widow of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who passed Dr Bahbah’s number to Dr Hamad.
In the 1990s, Dr Bahbah was part of a Palestinian delegation to the multilateral peace talks.
He became close to Arafat but he had no experience of a negotiation as delicate and intractable as this.
The first step was to build trust. Dr Bahbah contacted Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy.
Witkoff and Bahbah had something in common – one a real-estate mogul, the other an academic, neither had any experience in diplomacy. It represented the perfect manifestation of Trump’s ‘outside the box’ methods.
Read more from Sky News:
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But Witkoff was sceptical of Dr Bahbah’s proposal at first. Could he really have any success at securing agreement between Israel and Hamas? A gesture to build trust was necessary.
Bahbah claims he told his new Hamas contact that they needed to prove to the Trump administration that they were serious about negotiating.
Within weeks a remarkable moment more than convinced Dr Bahbah and Witkoff that this new Hamas back-channel could be vitally important.
On 12 May, after 584 days in Hamas captivity, Israeli-American Edan Alexander was released.
We were told at the time that his release was a result of a direct deal between Hamas and the US.
Israel was not involved and the deal was described by Hamas as a “good faith” gesture. Dr Bahbah sees it as his deal.
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Doctors on the frontline
Direct talks took place between Dr Bahbah and five Hamas officials in Doha who would then convey messages back to at least 17 other Hamas leadership figures in both Gaza and Cairo.
Dr Bahbah in turn conveyed Hamas messages back to Witkoff who was not directly involved in the Hamas talks.
A Qatari source told me that Dr Bahbah was “very involved” in the negotiations.
But publicly, the White House has sought to downplay his role, with an official telling Axios in May that “he was involved but tangentially”.
The Israeli government was unaware of his involvement until their own spies discovered the backchannel discussion about the release of Alexander.
Since that April phone call, Dr Bahbah has remained in the Qatari capital, with trips to Cairo, trying to help secure a final agreement.
He is taking no payment from anyone for his work.
As he told me when we first met back in January: “If I can do something to help to end this war and secure a future for the Palestinian people, I will.”
It is one of the most notorious and secret places in Iran.
Somewhere foreign journalists are never allowed to visit or film. The prison where dissidents and critics of Iran’s government disappear – some never to be seen again.
But we went there today, invited by Iranian authorities eager to show the damage done there by Israel.
Evin Prison was hit by Israeli airstrikes the day before a ceasefire ended a 12-day war with Iran. The damage is much greater than thought at the time.
We walked through what’s left of its gates, now a mass of rubble and twisted metal, among just a handful of foreign news media allowed in.
A few hundred yards in, we were shown a building Iranians say was the prison’s hospital.
Behind iron bars, every one of the building’s windows had been blown in. Medical equipment and hospital beds had been ripped apart and shredded.
Debris scattered across what Iran says was the prison hospital
It felt eerie being somewhere normally shut off to the outside world.
On the hill above us, untouched by the airstrikes, the buildings where inmates are incarcerated in reportedly horrific conditions, ominous watch towers silhouetted against the sky.
Evin felt rundown and neglected. There was something ineffably sad and oppressive about the atmosphere as we wandered through the compound.
The Iranians had their reasons to bring us here. The authorities say at least 71 people were killed in the air strikes, some of them inmates, but also visiting family members.
Authorities say this building was the visitor centre
Iran says this is evidence that Israel was not just targeting military or nuclear sites but civilian locations too.
But the press visit highlighted the prison’s notoriety too.
Iran’s critics and human rights groups say Evin is synonymous with the brutal oppression of political prisoners and opponents, and its practice of hostage diplomacy too.
British dual nationals, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe were held here for years before being released in 2022 in exchange for concessions from the UK.
Read more:
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Inmates are held in building on a hill above, which has been untouched by airstrikes
Interviewed about the Israeli airstrikes at the time, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe showed only characteristic empathy with her former fellow inmates. Trapped in their cells, she said they must have been terrified.
The Israelis have not fully explained why they put Evin on their target list, but on the same day, the Israeli military said it was “attacking regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran”.
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The locus of their strikes were the prison’s two entrances. If they were trying to enable a jailbreak, they failed. No one is reported to have escaped, several inmates are thought to have died.
The breaches the Israeli missiles made in the jail’s perimeter are being closed again quickly. We filmed as a team of masons worked to shut off the outside world again, brick by brick.
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