Tracing weapons flows from the US

The assault rifles and pistols arrived in Haiti stashed in two cardboard boxes, nestled among packages of food and clothes, on a cargo ship stacked with rust-red shipping containers.

They had come from the US, which one expert describes as a “supermarket” feeding an arms race among gangs that have brought chaos to the Caribbean island nation.

An investigation by the BBC World Service and BBC Verify traced the two boxes’ journey, showing how weapons from the US reach Haiti. It reveals a chain of lax laws, absent checks and suspected corruption used by traffickers to bypass a UN embargo.

Haitian police announced in April 2024 that they had seized the two boxes. They contained 12 assault rifles, 14 pistols and 999 ammunition cartridges.

A police photo clearly shows weapons from two different US-based manufacturers.

The shipment had travelled nearly 1,200km (746 miles) from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Cap-Haitien in northern Haiti, on the Rainer D cargo ship.

The shipping container was filled in a warehouse yard in Fort Lauderdale, according to a UN Panel of Experts, which is tasked with monitoring sanctions on Haiti and investigated the shipment.

Haitians in the US frequently ship much-needed food and other items to the country.

A man named Anestin Predestin told the Miami Herald that in late February 2024, he was leasing out space in the container.

He told the newspaper that a man who gave his name as “Diamortino” put in two boxes saying they contained “clothes” – and that he was shocked to learn later they had contained weapons.

The BBC’s attempts to contact Mr Predestin were unsuccessful.

It is not clear where the guns had been bought. Guns are not manufactured in Haiti, and previous seizures have included guns bought in Florida.

Sometimes dubbed the “gunshine state”, Florida was one of about 30 states where, until 2024, private, unlicensed sellers could sell firearms, for example at gun shows and online, without doing background checks. As president, Joe Biden tightened these rules nationally.

The UN panel says two Haitian brothers based in the US had used “straw buyers” – individuals buying on their behalf – to buy the weapons in the seized shipment.

Experts say this is a common method, often with the guns transported in multiple shipments of small quantities, a process named “ant trafficking”.

The container was shipped by the Florida-based shipping company Alliance International Shipping, Haitian police say.

Alliance International Shipping does not own vessels travelling to Haiti, but buys space on ships and sells it on to clients such as Mr Predestin.

The company’s president, Gregory Moraille, said in a statement to the BBC that it provides empty containers to customers, but does not physically interact with the cargo.

“Unfortunately, we have no viable means of preventing illicit shipments,” he says, adding the firm co-operates with authorities and has many staff originating from Haiti.

“Tragically, many of our own families have been victims of gun violence in Haiti,” he adds.

The BBC contacted US Customs and Border Protection to ask whether the shipment could have been checked as it left the US, but received no response.

The UN panel said last September that US searches had increased, but “the vast majority of the 200 containers heading from South Florida to Haiti every week are not inspected”.

A former official with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Bill Kullman, told the BBC that checks on outgoing cargo are “very scattershot” and the volume of shipments is “incredible”.

Haitian police say they discovered the weapons in a “targeted search” of the container.

According to the UN panel, a senior Haitian customs official had put one of the boxes containing weapons in his vehicle and was arrested and sacked a few days later.

Police said they were seeking a man called Wilmane Jean, who is named in the customs data as the consignee for the shipment – the person responsible for receiving it.

The BBC understands from sources in Haiti that he is a customs broker, is on the run and is suspected of being connected with gang activity in the north of the country.

A previous UN report says Haitian customs operations suffer from a lack of capacity, corruption among senior officials, and threats and attacks from gangs.

BBC attempts to contact Haitian customs authorities for comment were unsuccessful.

Around the time the weapons were packed into the shipping container, a wave of gang violence swept through the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

Gangs freed thousands of inmates from the main prison, and blockaded the capital’s ports and airport.

In March 2024, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, unable to return from an overseas trip, agreed to step down.

A record 5,601 people were killed in gang violence in Haiti in 2024, according to the UN. Its agencies say nearly a tenth of the population – over a million people – have fled their homes and half the population faces acute hunger. Kidnapping and extortion are rife.

Wilson, a handyman from Port-au-Prince, was shot in the leg while trying to flee as gangs fought over territory in his neighbourhood.

“It was chaos, everyone was running from their homes,” he told the BBC. “My leg stopped working. When I looked down, blood was pouring.”

He is now living alongside hundreds of other people in a school that is being used as a shelter.

Experts say the authorities do not have the capacity to take back control, despite support from an international security force including at least 800 Kenyan police officers.

The gangs have gained territory in the past six months, and now control at least 85% of the capital, says Romain le Cour, a Haiti expert at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, an NGO with headquarters in Geneva.

Gang members frequently pose on social media with high-calibre weapons. Experts told the BBC some of the guns displayed were definitely made in the US, and others are likely to have been manufactured there too.

However, guns and ammunition “keep on coming”, says Mr Le Cour, which is “a massive driver for violence and instability”.

To investigate the potential scale of trafficking from the US using similar shipping routes, the BBC analysed customs data shared with us by the shipping data platform CargoFax.

We compiled a list of individuals currently under sanctions for alleged gang connections in Haiti, and others who have been arrested in Haiti or the US as suspected arms traffickers.

We checked these names against thousands of records of shipments from the US to Haiti over four years.

In total, 26 people on the list were named as consignees for 286 shipments, which took place before the individuals were put under sanctions or arrested. It is not clear whether these shipments contained weapons.

Listed 24 times as a consignee was Prophane Victor – a former member of Haiti’s parliament who was later put under UN and US sanctions for arming gangs and trafficking weapons. He was arrested in Haiti in January.

“First and foremost, US authorities are not doing enough,” says Mr Le Cour.

Mr Kullman, the former US official at the ATF, says there is no legal obligation on gun dealers to report suspicious buyers.

Changes to US gun laws are “really politically difficult to achieve”, he says, but he would like to see a voluntary code of conduct for firearms sellers covering issues such as sales to suspicious buyers and information sharing.

Also, gun registration – similar to car registration – is in place in a few states and could be “really helpful” if adopted more widely, Mr Kullman adds.

Jonathan Lowy, president of Global Action on Gun Violence, says gun makers are told when trafficked guns are under investigation and are aware which dealers are selling guns to traffickers.

“Manufacturers cutting off these dealers would put an immediate stop to most trafficking routes from the US.”

The BBC contacted the ATF and the US Department for Homeland Security for comment, but received no responses.

Mr Le Cour says international scrutiny of the problem has increased, but there is no visible impact: “We know we have the diagnosis, we know what the symptoms are, but we’re not doing anything to actually cure it”.

Additional reporting by Thomas Spencer, BBC Verify

Graphics by Daniel Arce-López, Jake Friend, Kate Gaynor, Gerry Fletcher and Caroline Souza