Addison Pierre Maalouf likes to go to dangerous places and seek out people to talk to that you would rather not meet. His last adventure for the time being was apparently fatal for the YouTube star (1.4 million subscribers).
Maalouf, who calls himself “Yourfellowarab” (your fellow Arab citizen), wanted to meet Jimmy Chérizier for an interview in the gang-dominated Caribbean state. The 47-year-old is the leader of the infamous gang “G9” and is known by his nickname “Barbecue”.
But that wasn’t to happen: just one day after Maalouf arrived in Haiti, the YouTube star from the USA was kidnapped by gang members along with a Haitian colleague!
The kidnappers are reportedly demanding a ransom of $600,000 (around €555,000), the news platform reports haiti24-net. Although $40,000 of the sum has already been handed over, the kidnappers do not want to be satisfied with that.
Maalouf, known as Arab, has more than 1.4 million subscribers on YouTube
Trapped in a cage?
▶︎ According to media reports, Maalouf was kidnapped on March 14th. But it wasn’t until Maundy Thursday that the news of the YouTuber’s disappearance spread. A friend of the abductee published Arab’s last video on X (formerly Twitter). A YouTuber named Lord Miles claims he spoke to Maalouf directly. Accordingly, Arab is being held captive in a cage in one of the eastern suburbs of Port-au-Prince.
“Stupid gang member with AK-47”
In it, the YouTuber shows himself on the balcony of a hotel with a view of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. The city is completely dominated by gangs, reports Maalouf. It is already 6 o’clock in the afternoon and will soon be dark and is therefore too dangerous to drive there that same evening, he explains in the video.
He literally says: “All it takes is one stupid gang member with an AK-47 for things to go wrong…” Instead, he wanted to set off early in the morning around 3 a.m. in order to reach the city by sunrise.
Maalouf announced his trip to Haiti on March 10th on X. He was well aware that he was putting himself in extreme danger: “When I die, I thank you for looking at what I published. If I live, everything belongs to God.”