PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived Thursday in Haiti to reaffirm the US government’s commitment to a multinational mission to fight gangs in the Caribbean country and push for long-awaited general elections.
Some 400 Kenyan police have been deployed to Haiti to lead a UN-backed mission to quell gang violence in the Haitian capital and beyond, but concerns have grown that the mission lacks enough funding and equipment.
Brian Nichols, US assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said Wednesday that the US government is considering a UN peacekeeping operation as one way to secure money and resources to fight gangs that control 80 percent of Haiti’s capital.
Blinken arrived a day after Haiti’s government extended a state of emergency to the entire country. It had been imposed earlier in the year in the capital and surrounding areas in an attempt to stem the ongoing violence.
Blinken is scheduled to meet with Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille and a nine-member transitional presidential council that was created after former Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned. He also planned to meet with unspecified political party leaders.
Blinken also will meet with the head of the multinational mission and the chief of Haiti’s National Police.
“Our goal is to recognize the positive progress made toward improving security and encourage efforts to appoint the provisional electoral council so Haiti can move toward elections,” Nichols told reporters ahead of the trip.
Haiti last held elections in 2016, and officials since then have blamed gang violence and political upheaval for preventing them from holding new ones.
In July 2021, former President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, and gang violence since then has surged. In February, gangs launched coordinated attacks on police stations and the main international airport, which remained closed for nearly three months. They also stormed Haiti’s two largest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.
The violence subsided somewhat before the first contingent of Kenyan police arrived in late June.
“We are seeing a dramatic increase in patrols and operations designed to restore security and sense of normalcy in Haiti,” Nichols said.
However, gangs continue to attack communities surrounding the capital of Port-au-Prince.
After meeting with officials in Haiti, Blinken is scheduled to fly Thursday night to the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
On Friday, he is scheduled to meet with Dominican President Luis Abinader and other officials before returning to the US later that day.
Nichols said the talks with Abinader will focus on three priorities: strengthening economic ties, advancing values including respect for human and labor rights and promoting increased security in the region, especially in Haiti.
Abinader has come under fire in recent years for his administration’s treatment of Haitian migrants and those born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents.
He also has largely closed the airspace with Haiti and is building a wall between the two nations.
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Blinken arrives in Haiti to show US support for fighting gang violence
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Blinken arrives in Haiti to show US support for fighting gang violence
- Blinken arrived a day after Haiti’s government extended a state of emergency to the entire country
- Blinken is scheduled to meet with Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille and a nine-member transitional presidential council
Louvre heist probe still aims to ‘recover jewelry’, top prosecutor says
- Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery
PARIS: French investigators remain determined to find the imperial jewels stolen from the Louvre in October, a prosecutor has said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
Police believe they have arrested all four thieves who carried out the brazen October 19 robbery, making off with jewelry worth an estimated $102 million from the world-famous museum.
“The interrogations have not produced any new investigative elements,” top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said this week, three months after the broad-daylight heist.
But the case remains a top priority, she underlined.
“Our main objective is still to recover the jewelry,” she said.
That Sunday morning in October, thieves parked a mover’s truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery housing the French crown jewels.
Two of the thieves climbed up the ladder, broke a window and used angle grinders to cut glass display booths containing the treasures, while the other two waited below, investigators say.
The four then fled on high-powered motor scooters, dropping a diamond-and-emerald crown in their hurry.
But eight other items of jewelry — including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his second wife, Empress Marie-Louise — remain at large.
Beccuau said investigators were keeping an open mind as to where the loot might be.
“We don’t have any signals indicating that the jewelry is likely to have crossed the border,” she said, though she added: “Anything is possible.”
Detectives benefitted from contacts with “intermediaries in the art world, including internationally” as they pursued their probe.
“They have ways of receiving warning signals about networks of receivers of stolen goods, including abroad,” Beccuau said.
As for anyone coming forward to hand over the jewels, that would be considered to be “active repentance, which could be taken into consideration” later during a trial, she said.
A fifth suspect, a 38-year-old woman who is the partner of one of the men, has been charged with being an accomplice but was released under judicial supervision pending a trial.
Investigators still had no idea if someone had ordered the theft.
“We refuse to have any preconceived notions about what might have led the individuals concerned to commit this theft,” the prosecutor said.
But she said detectives and investigating magistrates were resolute.
“We haven’t said our last word. It will take as long as it takes,” she said.
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