By DÁNICA COTO and ASHRAF KHALIL, Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A federal grand jury has indicted one of Haiti’s most powerful gang leaders and a U.S. citizen accused of conspiring with him to violate U.S. sanctions and fund gang activities in the troubled Caribbean country , the U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Jimmy Chérizier , best known as “Barbecue,” is a leader of a gang federation called Viv Ansanm that the U.S. designated as a foreign terrorist organization in May.
Chérizier lives in Haiti, and the U.S. is offering up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest or conviction.
Chris Landberg, a senior U.S. State Department official, said Chérizier’s “reign of terror and mass violence against Haiti must end.”
But Jake Johnston, author of