American YouTube personality is released after being kidnapped in Haiti

An American YouTube personality who was kidnapped two weeks ago by a gang leader in Haiti was released over the weekend and was on his way home to the United States on Monday morning, according to his father.

The American, Adisson Pierre Maalouf, 26, had traveled to Haiti from the neighboring Dominican Republic to interview Jimmy Chérizier, a former police officer and gang leader known as Barbecue, according to Maalouf’s family, who spoke to The New York Times after his release.

Kidnapped with him was Maalouf’s guide, Jean Sacra Sean Roubens, a Haitian journalist. Roubens confirmed to the Times that he had also been released.

Maalouf said on social media that he had been abducted by a rival gang leader and held in a “concrete shack surrounded by barbed wire” in a remote location.

“Can’t give any more detail till I’m home, but all I will say for now is – Glory be to God,” he said.

Chérizier could not be reached for comment, and there is no evidence that he was involved in the abductions.

Maalouf, a Lebanese American from Georgia, calls himself “Arab” on his social media platforms. He was kidnapped March 14 near the airport in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, his father, Pierre Maalouf, told the Times.

“He enjoys doing interviews with bad people; let’s put it that way,” Pierre Maalouf said.

In a video posted on social media Saturday morning, shortly before Adisson Pierre Maalouf’s release, he and Roubens are seen sitting on a sofa and exchanging hugs with Joseph Wilson, a gang leader known in Haitian Creole as Lanmò Sanjou, or Death Can Come Any Day.

In the video, Wilson said the two men had been treated well, despite being held against their will. He could not be reached for comment.

Wilson is wanted in the United States in connection with the kidnapping of 16 Christian missionaries and their children, who were held for ransom in 2021.

He was indicted in

2022 on 16 counts of hostage taking, and the U.S. government has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

Roubens 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.”

“That was the only way to get out of that situation,” he added.

Roubens, an experienced fixer for YouTube personalities and foreign journalists seeking to report on Haiti’s criminal groups, said he was traumatized and vowed to stay away from the gangs in the future. “I will not go to the red zone any longer; I am done with it,” he said, adding that he regretted putting his family through “the pain they had to go through during the time I was away.”

Pierre Maalouf, 60, said his family was in touch with his son throughout the ordeal and was confident that he would be released unharmed.

“I knew that he was safe,” said Pierre Maalouf, adding that gangs in Haiti use kidnapping as a source of money and do not hurt their victims if they are paid a ransom. “They want to negotiate business. They get what they want, and that’s basically it.”

He added that the family had paid a ransom to free his son.

A representative for the U.S. State Department said the organization was “aware of reports of the kidnapping of a U.S. citizen in Haiti” but gave no further details.

The State Department advises Americans against travel to Haiti, citing widespread violence and kidnappings. The United States and other countries have evacuated hundreds of people from Haiti in recent weeks.

The abductions of Maalouf and Roubens are the latest high-profile acts in Haiti by armed groups, which last year were blamed for at least 3,000 kidnappings, according to the United Nations.

Security in Haiti has deteriorated into a “cataclysmic situation,” the U.N. reported Thursday.