Thirteen days before 16 Americans and a Canadian were brazenly kidnapped at gunpoint by a notorious gang on the eastern outskirts of Haiti’s capital last weekend, a prominent pastor and two of his congregants were abducted on the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Pastor Jean Pierre Ferrer Michel, a founding member of the church Jesus Center in the Delmas 29 neighborhood, was grabbed on Sunday, Oct. 3, by armed men dressed as Haiti National Police officers while in his four-wheel-drive Nissan Patrol in the parking lot of his Port-au-Prince church. It was just before 8 a.m.
More than three weeks later, Michel, who is a U.S. citizen, still has not been freed along with one of his male congregants, even though an undisclosed ransom amount has been paid, his family said. Michel’s captivity has largely been ignored except for mentions in the local Haitian press.
