Vigilante lynch mob stones ’13 gang members’ and burns them alive in Haiti.
The mob beat and burned the 13 men to death with gasoline-soaked tyres on Monday after pulling them from police custody at a traffic stop, police and witnesses in the capital Port-au-Prince said.
Six more burned bodies were seen in a nearby neighbourhood later on in the day, and witnesses claimed to have seen police kill them before residents set them on fire.
Haiti’s National Police said in a brief statement that officers in the city’s Canape Vert section had stopped and searched a minibus for contraband.
The officers confiscated weapons from suspects before they were ‘unfortunately lynched by members of the population’, the officials said.
The statement did not elaborate on how members of the crowd were able to take control of the suspects.
A witness named Edner Samuel said after the mob beat the purported gang members into submission, they put tires on top of them, doused them in gasoline, and lit them on fire.
Samuel said the gang suspects had been en route to join other members of their criminal enterprise who were battling police in the nearby neighborhood of Turgeau, where gunshots had been heard ringing out all morning, according to witness Jean Josue.
The gang suspects who were slain Monday were linked to the Kraze Barye gang, according to witnesses.
That organization is led by Vitel’Homme Innocent, who is linked to Moïse’s murder and also accused of helping to kidnap 17 US missionaries in 2021.
