Gangs asks $17 Million ransom to release kidnapped US missionaries

A Haitian gang that captured a group of US and Canadian missionaries is asking $ 17 million to release them, as per a top Haitian official.

Justice Minister Liszt Quitel told Reuters that communications with kidnappers were underway to release the seventeen missionaries who had been abducted outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, over the weekend by a gang named 400 Mawozo.

The minister confirmed the large ransom, telling Reuters that they had asked for $ 1 million per person, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Tuesday.

CNN also reported earlier on Tuesday that the kidnappers first called Christian Aid Ministries - the group to which the victims belong - on Saturday and asked immediate hand over the ransom for the release of the missionaries. The FBI and Haitian police are talking to the group on negotiations, the minister said.

Several calls between the kidnappers and the mission group have taken place since they disappeared, the minister told CNN.

The Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries demanded in a statement for the "Haitian and US civilian authorities working to resolve this situation".

The mission organization said the group of 16 Americans and one Canadian included six women and five children, including an eight-month-old baby. They were captured from an area called Croix-des-Bouquets, about 13 kilometres outside the capital, which is dominated by the 400 member Mawozo gangs.

Five priests and two French citizens were captured in Croix-des-Bouquets in April 2021 and released later that month. Quitel told the Wall Street Journal that a ransom had been paid for the release of two of the priests.

Kidnappings have become more hateful and commonplace in Haiti amid a growing political and economic crisis, with only 628 incidents in the first nine months of 2021 alone, according to a report by the Haitian Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research, or CARDH .