An American Youtube personality who had been abducted by a gang in Haiti for 17 days said he was released after paying a ransom, but was once again captured afterwards by another gang and was therefore unable to leave the country.
Adisson Pierre Maalouf, 26, better known as “YourFellowArab” on YouTube – where he has 1.4 million followers -, had traveled to Haiti from the neighboring Dominican Republic, to interview Jimmy Chérizier, a former police officer and gang leader known as Barbacue, as reported by Maalouf’s family to the Times.
He was reportedly kidnapped on March 14 near the airport in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. After being forced to pay around $50,000 in stolen equipment and ransom to be freed, Maalouf was released over the weekend, according to his father, Pierre Maalouf.
However, just as he was expected to leave the Caribbean country, Maalouf announced to his 230,000 followers on X on Monday that he was unable to leave the chaos-torn nation.
“After everything, I was peacefully leaving and someone tried to extort me AGAIN and now I am detained for no reason and no explanation,” he wrote on X.
Haiti is firmly under the control of violent gangs, who have taken over parts of the capital and shuttered the international airport. Referring to his previous captivity, Maalouf said he had been abducted by a rival gang leader and held in a “concrete shack surrounded by barbed wire” in a remote location.
Shortly before Maalouf and Roubens release, a video posted to social media on Saturday morning showed them both sitting on a couch and exchanging hugs with Joseph Wilson, a gang leader known as Lanmò Sanjou in Haitian Creole, or as Death Can Come Any Day.
In the video, Wilson, who still has not addressed the kidnapping, said that the two men had been fairly treated, despite being held against their will.
Roubens has said in an interview that he and Maalouf were held at gunpoint by armed men and forced to record videos with Wilson, pretending “to act friendly with him,” as “that was the only way to get out of that situation,” he added. Also kidnapped with Maalouf was his tour guide, Jean Sacra Sean Roubens, a Haitian journalist.
Chérizier has not yet commented on the kidnapping, but so far there is no evidence that he was involved in the abduction of Maalouf and Roubens.
Wilson is currently wanted in the United States in connection to the abduction of 16 Christian missionaries and their children, who were held for ransom in 2021. In 2022, he was indicted on 16 counts of hostage taking, and the US government has offered a $1 million reward for information that would lead to his arrest.
Pierre Maalouf, 60, has disclosed that his family had to pay a ransom to free his son.
The State Department is advising Americans against traveling to Haiti, citing widespread violence and kidnappings there
