These actions of disintegration “must be followed by tracking the suppliers of weapons and ammunition to these criminal gangs, an essential step to fully eradicate this harmful phenomenon completely,” added the priest, quoted by Radio Metropole Haiti.

Maisonneuve explained that the current police operations are made possible by the willingness of government institutions to confront these groups, while the lack of further actions to eradicate them responds “to complicity between the leaders of these gangs and certain officials”.

The religious authority assured to have evidence, according to the radio station, that members of the current government “are heavily involved, like the uniformed officers during previous executives, in the trafficking of weapons and ammunition across the border”.

This is the main source of supply for the gangs, which, he recalled, has been denounced since 2016 by the Karl Lévêque Institute, run by him, an entity that also summoned the executive earlier because of the participation of several officials and parliamentarians in obtaining weapons.

Ending gang terrorism in the Caribbean nation, he said, also requires “strict control of land, sea and air borders, as 90 percent of the solution to the security problem depends on it”.

abo/ro/apb