January 27, 2010
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Gang leader who escaped in the Haiti quake, tells his story
From The TimesJanuary 27, 2010Damascène Maurice,
Martin Fletcher in Port-au-Prince
In a stinking back alley in the vast labyrinth of hovels that is the western hemisphere’s poorest and most dangerous slum, a tall, muscular young man relates one of the great untold stories of the Haitian earthquake: how thousands of inmates, himself included, escaped that day from a top-security prison.
It turns out, however, that there is a quid pro quo for talking to The Times. Damascène Maurice, 32, godfather of a district of Cité Soleil known as Zone Quatre, is now on the run after fleeing from the Prison Civil de Port-au-Prince and needs help. “What are your suggestions?” he asks, then answers himself: that we smuggle him across the border into the Dominican Republic in our car. A tricky one that, but first things first.
A Catholic priest had put us in touch with Maurice, describing him as someone with whom charitable organisations like his own had to deal if they were to help the destitute people he controlled.
A well-placed Haitian journalist, who requested anonymity, said that Maurice was a gang leader who had been picked up by Brazilian peacekeepers early in 2008 and was serving life for his role in the killings and kidnappings for which Cité Soleil became infamous in the early 2000s.
Maurice painted a more charitable picture of himself, insisting that he had been convicted of nothing and was merely a “development agent” trying to help his downtrodden people.
An intermediary took us to see him. We drove into Cité Soleil along dirt alleys riven by open sewers and flanked by shacks so rudimentary that the earthquake largely spared them. Ragged clothes hung from lines. Half-naked, barefoot children played in the refuse. People stared. Cité Soleil is populated by the poorest of the poor, a place long ravaged by crime, armed gangs, disease, unemployment, illiteracy and every conceivable social ill.
The side alley where we encountered Maurice was guarded by menacing young men. It was obvious who their leader was. Unlike anyone else, he wore expensive shades, a gold ear stud, assorted bling and clean clothes. He sent a boy for Cokes and, as a crowd gathered round, started telling his story.
He said that he had been in prison for two years, alongside the four or five thousand murderers, psychopaths, thieves, criminals and innocents who filled the high-walled compound in central Port-au-Prince. When the earthquake struck he was in Cell 7 with 80 others. “Everyone was terrified and praying, ‘God, God, God’,” he said. “The guards fled. The walls were shaking. We thought we were going to die because the gate was locked and there was no way out. But the earthquake weakened the walls around the gate, and with the strength God gave us we were able to push it down.”
The Times visited the abandoned prison yesterday and it was clear that there had been utter pandemonium in what appeared a hellish place even before the quake.
The dark, windowless cells were littered with clothes and mattresses and had evidently been grotesquely overcrowded. The gates of some had clearly been unlocked. Others had been forced, with deep gouges in the walls around the locks showing where some prisoners had frantically tried to free their fellow inmates with improvised crowbars and other utensils. The stench of decomposing flesh emanating from one or two cells suggested that they were not always successful.
Before leaving, some prisoners ransacked the armoury and set fire to the administrative block so that all their records would be destroyed. Most escaped through the main entrance. Maurice climbed over one of the perimeter walls and jumped on to the roof of an adjacent house, which promptly collapsed. He survived with no more than a cut to his foot.
He then walked five miles to Cité Soleil through scenes of Armageddon. Darkness was falling and everywhere people were screaming, crying and frantically searching for relatives in the wreckage of their homes. There were fires burning and streets entirely blocked by rubble. He was not wearing a prison uniform, and nobody paid him the slightest notice until he reached home. “My family were astonished to see me,” he said.
A fortnight on, any elation Maurice felt at his unexpected liberation has long since vanished. For the time being he feels relatively safe in Cité Soleil, knowing that the police have much greater priorities than hunting for him, and that his people would swiftly alert him if they even attempted to enter the massive slum. He was quite happy for The Times to say where he was.
He still takes the precaution of changing house every day or two, dares not leave the slum and knows that he will always be a wanted man. He is no longer in prison, but he is still a prisoner. “No one can be happy living like that,” he said. “If the authorities understood the situation, they would realise it was only natural that we escaped from the prison because otherwise we could have died.”
We are right beneath the flight path into Port-au-Prince airport, and every few minutes our conversation is drowned out as another giant cargo plane bearing emergency supplies flies in low. It is getting dark, and even with the protection of Maurice, Cité Soleil at night is no place for foreigners. He poses for some photographs and we make to leave.
Maurice stops us. The only way he can have peace is to leave the country, he says. He would like to spend time with his wife and 13-year-old son, and asks when we will be going home. He suggests that we could drive him across the border into the Dominican Republic because the border police would probably not question him if he was with foreigners.
In the circumstances, a flat “no” was hardly an option. We stall, appear enthusiastic, discuss exactly when and how we might do it. He gives us manly hugs, an escort to guide us out — and lets us go.
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