In last week’s Keeping the Peace installment on Haiti I wrote about the UN Peacekeeping mission’s trend toward more assertive tactics in the troubled slums of Port-au-Prince. Since February, the Brazilian-led force launched incursions into Cite-Soleil, the vast sea-side slum, to arrest leaders of organized criminal groups that run extortion rackets on the local population. Yesterday, according to the UN News Service, they nabbed another top dog.
A long-hunted Haitian gang leader accused of assassinations, kidnappings and extortion was arrested today in a joint operation by Haitian National Police and United Nations peacekeepers in Cité Soleil, the notorious slum area in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The arrest of Torchon Jean Eoldy, alias Blade Nasson, who terrorized the neighbourhoods of Ti-Haïti and Linteau, is a part of “the joint efforts of the blue helmets and the PNH to return a lasting peace to Cité Soleil,” according to the UN Mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH.
“It will, in particular, allow the population of Linteau and Ti-Haiti to get back little by little to normal life,” the mission noted in a press release.
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