MIAMI—At first blush, the oversized blue plastic barrels appeared to be shipments of simple household items like clothing, bottles of Gatorade and shoes for use in Haiti.
But a deeper search of the wrapped garbage bags would reveal something more sinister, and deadlier: AK-47 and M1A rifles, and ammunition capable of piercing armored police vehicles and dense concrete walls to take out an enemy a mile away.
On Wednesday, two South Florida residents, along with a Haitian national who lives in Orlando, were indicted in federal court, along with the leader of a notorious Haitian gang behind last year’s kidnapping of 17 American and Canadian missionaries. They are charged with criminal conspiracy to violate U.S. export laws by smuggling firearms and munitions to aid the gang 400 Mawozo in Haiti.
According to the indictment unsealed Wednesday, the South Florida residents falsified Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms paperwork in order to purchase the firearms, which were later smuggled to Haiti in barrels. The transactions were done using the telephone messaging app WhatsApp in which Tunis, on calls with Joly, identified the best high-powered rifles and munition to get.
When a shipper complained that the barrels were heavy, Tunis, according to the criminal complaint in her arrest, replied that it was packed with rice.
While the three have pleaded not guilty and are being held pending trial, Joly has not yet entered a plea. During his first appearance Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Washington, D.C., before Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather, he was ordered detained pending further court proceedings. He was assigned defense attorney Allen Orenberg who said the case is “complex.” The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Seifert.
Joly had been a prisoner in Port-au-Prince’s National Penitentiary until he was picked up Tuesday by federal agents on an international warrant. As leader of the 400 Mawozo gang, he directed operations from prison using cellphones, the indictment says.
Joly’s indictment, along with his three co-defendants, offers a detailed look into the gun trade between South Florida and Haiti that is helping fuel the violence in the Caribbean nation.
Since Aug. 29, at least 39 civilians have died in the area east of Port-au-Prince, which is considered 400 Mawozo’s stronghold. The deaths are the results of a turf war between Joly’s gang and a rival armed group known as Chen Mechan, or Mean Dog. The clash risks plunging an already unstable and volatile Haiti deeper into a humanitarian crisis and cutting the capital off from the rest of the country.
The U.S. indictment claims that, from at least September through November 2021, Joly and his Florida-based co-defendants conspired to acquire and supply high-powered firearms and munitions to members of 400 Mawozo, which as far back as Jan. 12, 2020, was engaged in armed kidnappings for ransom of U.S. citizens in Haiti.
U.S. prosecutors have identified at least 17 shotguns, pistols and rifles, including a long-range Springfield Armory M1A rifle, that were purchased between September and October. During that time, the Florida trio also falsified ATF forms eight times to purchase the firearms in Miami, Orlando, Pompano Beach and Apopka, according to the indictment.
The ATF forms state that firearms may not be exported without proper authorization from the U.S. government and warns that the firearms cannot be transferred to anyone else. The form also warns that any person who transfers the weapons without proper authorization is subject to a fine of as much as $1 million and up to 20 years imprisonment.
Using Tunis’ phone records and text and voice messages on WhatsApp, the indictment says the Florida defendants obtained from Joly the specifications for weapons and ammunition, which they then purchased from Florida gun shops and later shipped to Haiti by concealing them in blue barrels with household items.
Prosecutors say Joly and Tunis exchanged a number of WhatsApp text and audio messages over several months related to the purchases of firearms by all three South Floridians. There are also records of wire transfers of money from Haiti, the indictment says.
The group shipped the weapons to Haiti by breaking them down and wrapping them in garbage bags, and loading them into large multi-gallon barrels before covering them with “various products such as clothes, shoes and Gatorade,” the charges say. Tunis, an investigator said, took photographs of the shipment. She even pointed to where the firearm was hidden in one of the barrels with a pink backpack inside.
The indictment doesn’t say who received the barrels. But the trio’s criminal complaint noted that the containers were shipped to an address in Laboule 16, which is located in the hills of the capital and far from the gang’s stronghold in Croix-des-Bouquets, just east of Port-au-Prince.
In one instance, on Oct. 4, Joly had an 86-minute call with Tunis, during which he placed a three-way call to Dor, who was on the call for 46 minutes, the indictment said. Two days later, on Oct. 6, according to the criminal complaint, Dor sent an audio message in Creole to Tunis about a specialized ammunition for a Barrett rifle, explaining that the bullets were so powerful, “when you shoot they’re like bombs. They do such damage.”
Dor went on to say that she hoped to convince the store clerk to let her purchase five because they had not yet been tested. That same day, according to ATF records, a Barrett rifle was purchased for over $11,000 from a licensed firearms dealer in Florida.
One of Haiti’s most dangerous gangs, 400 Mawozo has been terrorizing the Haitian population for over a year. They are known for their mass abductions, taking people by the bus and carloads, and extorting local businesses. Last week, Dominican diplomat Carlos Guillén Tatis, who is also a U.S. citizen, was kidnapped by 400 Mawozo while headed to the border the Dominican Republic and Haiti share.
Early Wednesday morning, as Joly was becoming acquainted with his new abode, Dominican Republic Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez announced on Twitter that Guillén Tatis had been freed after four days.
The gang remains engaged in an ongoing turf war east of the capital that had residents in Tabarre 27 waking up Wednesday to the sound of semi-automatic gunfire.
The ongoing conflict waged by gang members erupted two days after U.S. officials requested Joly’s transfer to the U.S. A joint report issued Wednesday by the United Nations and Haiti’s Office of Civil Protection said an estimated 9,000 people have been forced to abandon their homes.
Though the export of guns to Haiti is restricted and subject to U.S. approval, the number of illicit firearms in the country has reached unacceptable heights, the United Nations said in a 2020 report.
The U.N. estimated that there were more than 270,000 illegal firearms in the hands of civilians, but noted that the number could be as high as 500,000.
