A warlord turns to death, rape and rap videos to expand control in Haiti

“Ariel in Izo’s hands, kicked him out, kicked him out," prisoners chanted in a courtyard.

The prison raid was a brazen display of strength by the gangs and particularly Izo, whose real name is Johnson Andre, a 20-something rapper who has quickly emerged from obscurity to become one of the country’s most-feared gang bosses.

“Gonna whack them all," Andre said in a TikTok post directed to his rivals. “Going to snort cocaine and kill everyone who hates me."

Andre, along with his so-called Five Seconds Gang, has surged to prominence during the past few years and has expanded his control over the ports and coastline used for drugs and weapons smuggling. Along the way, he has systematically used the world’s most popular social-media platforms to recruit more foot soldiers and sow terror, posing a major challenge for the international security force that the U.S. and its allies are trying to deploy to stabilize a country fast falling into anarchy and starvation, security researchers and the United Nations say.

On Friday, TikTok banned Andre’s account, which had 227,000 followers, joining Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta—the parent of WhatsApp and Facebook—in curbing the spread of his content, in which he ridiculed Haitian politicians, rapped about killing police officers, and showed off new fatigues and military-grade weapons. “We stand firmly against violent extremism, and we work aggressively to identify and remove content and accounts that break these rules," a TikTok spokesperson said.

The videos from Andre, who rarely speaks to the mainstream press, had for business and political leaders become an important window into the murky world of gangs that have brought Haiti’s government to its knees. Haitian police, the United Nations and the U.S. blame Andre for much of the mayhem. They accuse him of homicide, rape, drug-running, kidnapping for extortion and hijacking vehicles that transport food and fuel. His gang has been one of the most active in the forced recruitment of child soldiers, the U.N. says, and has pushed thousands of civilians from their homes at gunpoint to solidify control over slums.

When sanctioning Andre in December, the U.S. Treasury Department said he and his gang were responsible for more than 1,000 cases of sexual violence in 2022.

Andre didn’t respond to requests for comment directed to his social-media accounts before they were banned. He couldn’t be reached for comment by other means.

The sheer violence of Andre’s methods—and the publication of the attacks on social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp—have astonished even experienced officials who have worked in Haiti.

“What’s new is the cruelty and public humiliation," said Bill O’Neill, the United Nations’ top human-rights expert on Haiti.

He described how videos of rapes, sometimes in front of family members, are disseminated on the web. “Never seen this before. Never on this level," said O’Neill, a 30-year veteran in Haiti who helped author a 156-page U.N. Security Council report on the gangs.

In a country with some 300 gangs, Andre and his Five Seconds Gang have stood out for their self-promotion.

Stocky, his hair and nails painted vibrant colors, and often brandishing metallic grills over his teeth, the baby-faced Andre had posted almost daily. “Mission failed," he raps in one choreographed and edited music video where he and fellow gangsters re-enact a thwarted police raid that left an officer dead and another a hostage.

Andre revels in the chaos, unlike Haiti’s other gang chiefs, such as Jimmy “Barbecue" Chérizier, who often lace their speeches with revolutionary rhetoric and claim to be liberating their nation from oppression by foreign imperialists and powerful oligarchs. In recent months, the most prominent among them have struck a temporary alliance to oust the unpopular Henry government and discourage the arrival of international peacekeeping forces, but the detente is fragile, gang experts say. And Andre in his videos has tried to outshine the others by claiming he is the most ruthless of them all.

“With others, it’s a message of social justice. With Izo, it’s, ‘The world has gone to hell, and I’m the biggest devil,’" said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who researches armed groups in the Americas and Africa.

The growing power of Izo marks an evolution in Haiti’s complex gang dynamics, security experts say, one that makes controlling the country harder than before.

For years, powerful political movements and business groups had financed and used gangs as enforcers, to control territory and fend off rivals. But Andre has spread his control to ports and coastline, making the Five Seconds Gang rich from the trafficking of weapons and drugs.

He also has a fleet of boats that his gang has allegedly robbed, which Felbab-Brown says gives him more maritime might than Haiti’s beleaguered coast guard.

“We’re seeing gangs act more and more autonomously and no longer depend on political handouts," said Nathalye Cotrino, who tracks gangs for New York-based Human Rights Watch. “Now we have gangs that are not interested in anything political, just continuing in their criminal activities."

That makes Andre particularly difficult to rein in, as Haiti’s political establishment struggles to organize a new transitional council that would name a new prime minister to succeed Henry, who said last month that he would resign, and welcome a Kenya-led international police force to bring order. Henry is outside Haiti, unable to return since embarking on a trip to meet with officials in Kenya.

Andre commands his Five Seconds Gang from a large Port-au-Prince home in a portside slum dubbed Village of God. A photograph taken from above and published in the U.N. report shows a soccer field and large pool in his gated compound, which is sandwiched between tin-roofed shanties.

The pool is a prominent fixture in Andre’s social-media videos, where he can be seen swimming and cooling off. In one, he counts a wad of $100 bills and gulps down cognac. In another post, he shows off a snazzy designer suit while a rap song interlaced with gunfire plays in the background. Others show him DJ-ing, liquor bottle in hand, as gang members in brightly colored balaclavas dance.

One large business owner in Haiti described Andre’s gang as nihilistic, citing its burning of schools, hospitals and the few remaining factories in the country. The gang has also taken control over hundreds of shipping containers holding everything from commercial merchandise to humanitarian-aid supplies.

“They want to destroy, destroy, destroy," said the business owner. He added that his factory has to frequently turn off its power generators so that the noise from the motor doesn’t attract the attention of gangsters.

O’Neill, the U.N. rights official, said that after Andre raided the prison last month, he incorporated numerous inmates into his gang, including Dimitri Herard, a former head of the presidential guard who had been locked up on charges of conspiring in the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

“He’s giving training, vehicles, gear" to Andre’s gang, O’Neill said of Herard.

The gang’s recruitment efforts have been bolstered by Andre’s ubiquitous social-media presence, which appears difficult to contain.

Last year, Andre was banned from YouTube after he received a silver plaque from the platform for surpassing 100,000 subscribers, which triggered a public campaign by activists to remove him from the site because of his role in violence.

But smaller, alternate accounts on YouTube continue to publish his videos. A YouTube spokesman said Andre is prohibited from posting on the platform, which is also working to terminate channels that prominently feature him. The site on Thursday took down one account with 70,000 followers, which had drawn millions of views, in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal.

Meta said it is using artificial intelligence to help weed out content from Andre and other large criminal organizations.

Andre’s use of social media mirrors strategies that in recent years helped other insurgent and criminal organizations expand their footprint, like al-Shabaab in East Africa, Mexican cartels and the Brazilian prison syndicate First Capital Command, said Felbab-Brown. The videos, she added, are used to stoke fear in rivals but also serve as advertising to South American cocaine smugglers who have long used Haiti as a transit hub for U.S.- and Europe-bound drug shipments.

His videos have helped lure more members to the gang, which is made up largely of young men from Haiti’s poorest enclaves who work for food, guns, phones and money, according to the U.N. report.

But where in the past barefoot gangsters wore torn and stained clothing, they are now in fresh uniforms, carry heavy weapons and pose in front of new Toyota pickup trucks, the videos show. They also showcase their tactical sophistication publishing videos recorded with drones that document strikes against Haitian National Police. The U.N. said drones are also used to surveil territory and plan kidnappings.

“This is like a professional studio that came in. My videos don’t look like that, and we have a team!" Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D., Fla.), the only Haitian American serving in Congress, said after seeing Andre’s posts recently. With the average age in Haiti at about 24 years, “it seems like they’re putting out these propaganda videos to recruit, to show how wonderful it is to be part of the gangs," she added.

O’Neill, the U.N. rights official, said that though their barbarity is shocking, the posts the gang members have published on social media might one day be used against them.

“Maybe we’ll be able down the road to identify them and bring them to justice," he said.

Ingrid Arnesen contributed to this article.

Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com