United States investigators have raised alarm after noticing an increase in the number and caliber of weapons that were being smuggled from Florida to Haiti in the past few months.
The Miami Homeland Security Investigations office chief, Anthony Salisbury, said that the agency's agents were increasing their efforts to address the trafficking of weapons. He noted that rising gang violence around Haiti's capital was the reason for the situation.
Weapons Imports to Haiti
Salisbury added that the guns they seized included a .50 caliber sniper rifle that military snipers use and other machine guns not usually seen during these circumstances. "It's incredibly disturbing," said the chief, adding that in the wrong hands, these weapons are completely capable of causing a vast amount of destruction.
The United Nations Security Council in July unanimously approved a resolution that renewed the mandate of a UN office in Haiti. It also called on all countries to immediately stop the transfer of small arms, light weapons, and ammunition that could be fueling gang violence in the region, as per the Washington Post.
The announcement of the uptick in weapons smuggled to Haiti follows several bloody outbreaks of gang violence in the region that included gunfights in downtown Port-au-Prince. It also comes as other countries, including The Bahamas and Jamaica, have reported a rising incidence of gun-linked homicides in their territories.
Salisbury noted that the agency has been trying to increase its efforts to stem the flow of illicit weapons going into Haiti and the Caribbean. Legal exports of weapons from the U.S. typically require licenses from American authorities.
According to Reuters, it also comes as Haiti is still subject to a 1990s arms embargo, which has been amended to allow some exceptions for exports of weapons to Haitian security forces. Guns are usually acquired in the U.S. via straw buyers, some of whom have identified themselves as the ultimate end users of the guns.
Very Troubling Situation
Last month, authorities discovered weapons in a shipping container labeled as church donations, which ignited anger over the steady flow of guns in the region. The seizure followed a vicious turf war in the coastal town of Cite Soleil in July that resulted in 471 either dead, wounded, or missing.
Salisbury said that the number of weapons seized at South Florida ports and elsewhere was just a sample of the ones being transported to Haiti. The official said that the incident is "very troubling" and that the kind of firepower they found could massacre a lot of people, even capable of shooting down a helicopter or an airplane.
During the chief's remarks, he was joined by top officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, Commerce Department, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, along with prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, and officers with the Miami-Dade Police.
Authorities encouraged the private sector, including shipping businesses, to provide tips about suspicious weapons exports to the Caribbean, a region that accounts for roughly half of all federal firearms smuggling investigations, the Miami Herald reported.
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