Jimmy Cherizie, a former policeman and then a bandit who leads the armed struggle to seize power in Haiti, a poor country in the Caribbean, is nicknamed "Barbeque" (Barbecue) - writes the American news agency NBC.
Cherizie claims it's because his mother had a fried chicken stand in the slums of Port-au-Prince.
But others say Cherizia earned the nickname because he orchestrated multiple massacres in the capital from 2018 to 2020, which killed dozens of people, many of them burned alive when their homes were deliberately set on fire, according to the United Nations.
"I would never massacre people of my social class," said Cherizius in an interview with the Associated Press in 2019. "I was born next to the ghetto of La Salina. I live in the ghetto. I know what life is like in the ghetto."
But Cherizius, dressed in his "trademark" - a bulletproof vest from which he does not part, has made it clear in recent interviews that he is ready to shed a lot of blood to achieve his goals.
"We will not lie to people by saying that we are leading a peaceful revolution," he told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. "We do not have a peaceful revolution. We are leading a bloody revolution".
One of the first victims of Cherizou's bloody revolution was the Prime Minister of Haiti, Ariel Henri, who announced on Tuesday that he would resign and dissolve the Government as soon as the Council of Transitional Authorities was established.
Cherizou's forces besieged and blockaded Haiti's main international airport, exchanged fire with army troops near government buildings and last Sunday freed nearly 4.000 gang members from a prison in Port-au-Prince.
In interviews, Cherizia compares herself to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, and even Robin Hood. He is also a fan of the Haitian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier who ruled with a firm hand from 1957 to 1971.
"It's clear that he sees his role as messianic and that's how he presents himself," Robert Faton, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and an expert on Haiti, recently told NBC.
Sherizije is closely connected with the Haitian party "Tet Kale" (PHTK), one of the most powerful - writes "InSight Crime", a non-profit organization that investigates organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While Henri is stuck in Puerto Rico because he can't return home because of the violence, Cherizius fills the power vacuum.
Haiti's newest ruler is believed to be 48 or 49 years old. Cherizier is from a poor neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. The youngest of eight children, he was five years old when his father died, and his mother ran a fried chicken stand to support the family.
Before he led the struggle for power in Haiti, Cherizie was a police officer - it is written in the UN notification about the sanctions that were introduced against him from October 21, 2022.
While still serving in the police force, Cherizius "planned and participated in a deadly attack on citizens in November 2018 in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood known as La Salin," which he says was his neighborhood.
At least 71 people were killed, more than 400 houses were destroyed, "and at least seven women were raped by armed bandits" - according to the UN sanctions announcement.
It was the worst massacre in Haiti in the last decade. Sherizije was fired from the Police and a warrant was issued for his arrest - local Haitian media reported. That's why in 2020 the US Department of Finance labeled him as a human rights violator.
But Cherizius managed to avoid any arrest.
During the next two years, Cherizius led "armed groups in coordinated, brutal attacks" in various neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince "where civilians were killed and houses burned," the UN said.
The weapons, vehicles and police uniforms used by Cherizou's forces during those massacres, according to InSight Crime, were obtained with the help of top officials in the government of President Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated in 2021.
As of October 11, 2022, Cherizou and his forces have been blocking Haiti's fuel supply from its largest terminal, and the UN has assessed that "his actions have directly contributed to the economic paralysis and humanitarian crisis" in that country, which has led to mass discontent turning into armed conflict. rebellion. Haitian police announced on Saturday that they raided the headquarters of Sherizi's gang and killed several criminals in the operation, but there was no mention that he himself was arrested or killed.
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