By: Kim Ives - Haiti Liberté

The trial of former Haitian death-squad leader Emmanuel "Toto" Constant for mortgage fraud was supposed to start May 7 at the New York State Supreme Court building in Brooklyn, but instead it was postponed until July 8.

The reasons for the postponement were unclear and apparently last-minute - Constant's name appeared on the court docket. One suspects a deal in the works judging from the very congenial dealings observed between New York State prosecutors and Constant's defense lawyer, Samuel Karliner.

New York State authorities arrested Constant in New York in July 2006 for his involvement in a mortgage fraud ring which bilked banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fake property sales from 2002 to 2006 (see Haiti Liberte, Vol. 1, No. 41, 4/20/2008).

Constant is a notorious figure in the Haitian community for acting as the head of the Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a CIA-supported death-squad that engaged in murder, arson, torture and rape during the 1991-1994 coup d'etat against the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

About one dozen demonstrators gathered outside the court-house with a sound system from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. to raise consciousness in the crowds rushing to work and school about the trial and Constant's human rights record. Since Constant fled a warrant in Haiti in December 1994 and clandestinely slunk into the U.S., human rights groups have been clamoring for him to be brought to justice for crimes against humanity.

"We now want to see that he does not get out of his economic crimes committed against the people of New York," said attorney Jenny Green of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), one of the organizations which sponsored the rally outside the court-house. "We know that he cannot be punished in this court for the human rights violations in Haiti. But we want to see due process done in this case.... Constant is not just a human rights violator. He's a thief . He needs to be punished for both categories of crimes. He should not be allowed to return to Haiti to commit future human rights abuses, to wreak havoc on the Haitian people."

For years, human rights and Haitian community groups called for Constant to be sent back to Haiti to stand trial, a call which the U.S. government resisted. Now Washington wants to see Constant sent back to Haiti while the grassroots groups do not.

"Before we wanted to send Toto back to Haiti when the Aristide government had made an extradition request, and we were sure he would meet with justice," explained Ray Laforest of the International Support Haiti Network (ISHN), another rally sponsor. "But at that point, the U.S. Justice Department refused to send him back. Today, the Haitian people are relatively weak, and the Haitian government is relatively weak. It is very likely that if Toto Constant were sent back he would not remain in jail, he would not receive justice. And it is now that we see the Department of Homeland Security insisting that Constant be sent back to Haiti immediately."

Public defender Lynn Stewart was also at the demonstration. "I'm proud to be out here today to speak out against this serial murderer, killer, rapist, runner of death squads," she said. "This is a person who was supported by the United States government because he fulfilled their aims of keeping Haiti a virtual colony, an economic disaster, an exploited place by the corrupters of government. Constant then came to the U.S. Of course he was welcomed with open arms, as are so many of his ilk."

One of the principal leaders of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, Annette "So An" Auguste, happened to be in New York this week and also came out to the demonstration. "If Haiti is in the state it is today, Toto Constant is one of the reasons for that," she said. "Because the first time Haiti had a president who was elected democratically, where the constitution gave him a five year term, Toto Constant was responsible for killing the most people during the coup against Aristide, who is now in exile in South Africa."

So An went on to explain that "U.S. forces captured lots of documents which proved how Toto Constant's organization FRAPH was responsible for the death of many people in Haiti. He was working for the CIA. The CIA brought him to the United States. Today we see that they give money more value than people" because Constant is being prosecuted for grand larceny and falsifying business documents rather than crimes against humanity. "We ask for justice for all the people that Toto Constant killed in Haiti," she concluded.

Prominent New York City council member Charles Barron decried that "our government protects the murderers of Haiti rather than the liberators of Haiti" in a country that through its 1804 slave revolution "has shown us that liberation is possible."

"Anybody like Toto Constant who worked with the Tonton Macoutes, who participated in the wholesale killing and murder of the Haitian people with their death squads and got away with it, we need to have them brought to justice," Barron said.

FRAPH crimes against women, particularly rape, has stirred many women's groups to action. "Toto Constant should be held accountable for all his crimes, whether it is mortgage fraud in New York or his crimes against women, against humanity, and his program of rape and other torture in Haiti," said Bertol Israel, the executive director of Dwa Fanm (Women's Rights), a New York-based Haitian women's organization. "We hope that after he has served his sentence in New York, he will do time for his crimes against humanity in Haiti."

The rally outside the court-house was sponsored by the CCR along with the ISHN, the Lavalas Family's New York chapter, and the Haitian Coalition to Support the Struggle in Haiti (KAKOLA).

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