Jimmy “Barbeque” Chérizier’s forces have laid siege to Haiti’s main international airport, traded fire with troops at government sites and sparked a mass jailbreak.

Jimmy Chérizier, the former Haitian police officer-turned-gangster leading the latest violent campaign to seize control of the country, is nicknamed “Barbeque.”

Chérizier insists it’s because his mother operated a fried chicken stand in the slums of Port-au-Prince.

But critics say it’s a moniker Chérizier earned after staging multiple massacres in the nation’s capital from 2018 to 2020 that, according to the United Nations, left dozens of people dead, many of whom were burned alive when their homes were deliberately torched.