US deports ex-paramilitary leader 'Toto' Constant to Haiti
Evens Sanon and DÁnica Coto, Associated Press
Updated 3:07 pm CDT, Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Photo: Dieu Nalio Chery, AP
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Former paramilitary leader Emmanuel Constant is detained by Haitian police at his arrival to the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, June 23, 2020. Human rights groups have accused Constant of killing and torturing Haitians when he became the leader of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s presidency was toppled in 1991.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Former paramilitary leader Emmanuel Constant was deported from the U.S. on Tuesday and arrested as soon as he landed in Haiti, where he faces murder and torture charges stemming from killings committed during the political upheaval of the 1990s that involved the U.S. government.
Constant did not say anything as he was placed into a police vehicle, where one officer held a cell phone up to Constant’s ear so he could talk to an unidentified person before he was taken away for questioning.
Constant was among 24 deported migrants who landed in the capital of Port-au-Prince, the fourth such flight since the COVID-19 pandemic began, said Jean Negot Bonheur Delva, director of Haiti’s migration office.
Some criticized his deportation and worried whether he would be held accountable for any of the charges he faces. Reed Brody, an attorney for Human Rights Watch known as the “dictator hunter,” told The Associated Press in a phone interview that Constant should be prosecuted somewhere.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/US-deports-ex-paramilitary-leader-Toto-Constant-15360286.php
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FACTS
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant was born on December 27, 1956. Constant was Secretary General of the paramilitary organization FRAPH, “Front Révolutionnaire Armé pour le Progrès d’Haiti” (Armed Revolutionary Front for the Progress of Haiti) at the time the unconstitutional and brutal military regime led by Raoul Cédras (see “related cases”) governed Haiti from October 1991 to October 1994.
The three-year military dictatorship was characterised by widespread state-sponsored human rights violations committed by the Haitian Armed Forces and FRAPH. The practices of the military and FRAPH included extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, and rape and other torture and violence against women. Several thousand people were killed during the period of military rule. These abuses also caused thousands of Haitians to flee the country, often in crowded, unseaworthy boats.
From the beginning of the military dictatorship, the Haitian Armed Forces used civilian attachés or paramilitaries to support their campaign of intimidation and repression against the people of Haiti. In 1993, Constant and others provided the name “Front Révolutionnaire Armé pour le Progrès d’Haiti” (Armed Revolutionary Front for the Progress of Haiti) to the principal paramilitary organization active in Haiti. The other name more commonly used by the organization was “Front Révolutionnaire pour l’Avancement et le Progrès d’Haiti” (Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti). Under either title, the group was known as FRAPH, a pun for the French and Creole word “frapper,” meaning “to hit” or “to beat”.
Constant, whose father was an army commander under the former Haitian Dictator François Duvalier, used Duvalier’s notorious “Tonton Macoutes” paramilitary units as a model for the formation of FRAPH. Under Duvalier, the Tonton Macoutes were officially labelled the “Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale” (National Security Volunteers or “VSN”). The VSN operated parallel to and in conjunction with the army while reporting directly to Duvalier.
More:
https://trialinternational.org/latest-post/emmanuel-constant/
(The proper designation for the specialized job both father and son was death squad leader. Tonton Macoutes were feared by everyone on the island who wasn't protected by the Duvaliers.)
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant
Haitian Death Squad Leader,
Toto Constant, to be brought
to justice for his campaign
of rape and murder
Courageous women bring civil suit
FOR ABUSES BY FRAPH
New York, NY: Emmanuel "Toto" Constant was served with a lawsuit today that accuses him of responsibility for torture, crimes against humanity and the systematic use of violence against women, including rape, for the purpose of terrorizing the Haitian population during that country's brutal military regime in the early 1990s.
Despite being the outspoken leader of the paramilitary death squad known as FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti), Toto Constant has lived and worked openly in Queens, New York, for the last ten years. The U.S. government tried to deport Constant in 1995, but suspended its efforts and released him from detention after he threatened on the 60 Minutes news program to expose information about the CIA's role in the formation of FRAPH.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York by the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), based in San Francisco, on behalf of several women who survived savage gang rapes and other forms of extreme violence, including attempted murder. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), based in New York, is serving as local counsel.
Following a violent military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, the Haitian Armed Forces trained and armed members of FRAPH to maintain control over Haiti's poor masses. After democracy was returned to Haiti in October 1994, the government of President Aristide issued a warrant for Constant's arrest. He fled and came to the United States.
All three plaintiffs in this case are women who were targeted by Constant and FRAPH as part of a systematic campaign of violence against women. Two of the women were gang raped repeatedly by FRAPH members in front of their families. One of the plaintiffs became pregnant and bore a child as a result of the rape she suffered. FRAPH operatives attacked the third plaintiff, leaving her for dead. Due to the fear of reprisals, the plaintiffs in this case have filed their claims anonymously.
More:
http://haitiaction.net/News/CJA/1_14_5.html
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Haiti death squad leader Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant’s deportation to Haiti is back on
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES AND MONIQUE O. MADAN
MAY 20, 2020 04:48 PM , UPDATED MAY 21, 2020 03:48 PM
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, a former strongman who once boasted that Vodou and the CIA shielded him from trouble, gestures during a press conference in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in this Sept. 22, 1994, photo. A lawsuit brought by three Haitian immigrants in Manhattan federal court against Constant claimed he sanctioned systematic rape to silence dissents against a right-wing regime. JOHN MCCONNICO AP FILE
Haitian death squad leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, who won a brief reprieve from deportation from the United States earlier this month when his removal was canceled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, could be back in Haiti as early as next week.
Several sources with knowledge of Constant’s pending removal told the Miami Herald that the Trump administration is planning on deporting him on an upcoming ICE Air deportation flight that could arrive in Haiti as early as Tuesday.
One of Haiti’s most notorious human rights violators, Constant’s name — and that of the brutal paramilitary force he led in the 1990s — have long been synonymous with terror and death in Haiti.
. . .
William G. O’Neill, an international human rights lawyer who helped document FRAPH’s brutality, said it would be a mistake to return Constant to Haiti where it is doubtful he would even serve out a November 2000 life sentence for the 1994 Raboteau massacre.
. . .
Modeled after the Tonton Macoute, the secret militia created by the Duvalier family to enforce its nearly 30-year dictatorship, FRAPH was used by the coup leaders to keep them in power after the overthrow of Aristide.
More:
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article242866031.html
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More information on the newer death squad which overthrew Aristide the 2nd time, during George W. Bush, the first time having been during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush after which the people of Haiti re-elected Aristide again, with photos and info. on this thread from D.U. Shown are Guy Phillippe, and Louis Jodel Chamblain, who were the most active in the slaughter of so many Haitians they accused of being Aristide's supporters, whom they gunned down in the streets. You will also doubtless recall that when people tried to flee from Haiti during that madhouse massacre, George W. Bush surrounded Haiti with U.S. ships, and turned them all back, returing all those terrified Haitians back to the shore, to be ground up by the guns of the US trained and outfitted death squads controlling the island by that time, after they marched across the border from the Dominican Republic.
From remote stronghold, Haiti fugitive seeks political power
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1016166609
= new reply since forum marked as read
because they are also the ones who supported Papa Doc Duvalier, and his creepy son who used the Tonton Macoute (his father's notorious, wildly brutal death squad) to keep the huge poor population paralyzed with fear.
They probably are overjoyed to get him back, unfortunately. Haitian elites have always had the total backing of the US, Canadian, French political, military, industrial folks, throughout.
Leaders who've cared for the population don't seem to last long, no matter how many times they get elected. The U.S. government hates them, sadly.
They overthrew the slave-owners because the suffering was horrendous, and apparently offended the other European-controlled nations. They did assist Cubans in their own struggle for freedom...
The Threat of a Free Haiti
BY
SAMUEL FARBER
The Haitian Revolution sowed fear in the hearts of Cuba's slaveholding class.
In 1791, while France entered the early stages of its revolution, the slaves of its Caribbean colony, Saint Domingue, rose up and took arms. It was the first successful slave revolt in history, one that overthrew white colonial rule and established the new state of Haiti in 1804.
The Haitian Revolution sent shivers through European possessions across the Caribbean and Latin America, and into the newly independent United States. It became a tremendous symbol of hope for slaves throughout these countries, and one of tremulous fear for their masters, particularly those living in the colonies. Its effects extended to the South American independence movement led by Simón Bolívar, and to France, particularly during the more radical periods of its own revolution.
In Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, historian Ada Ferrer undertakes a comprehensive evaluation of the impact made by the Haitian Revolution on Cuba, then still a Spanish colony located only fifty miles from Haiti’s western sea borders.
Ferrer — whose previous book Insurgent Cuba examines the racial dimensions of the island’s pro-independence movements in the latter half of the nineteenth century — develops an insightful account of the ways in which the Haitian Revolution spurred the intensification of plantation slavery in Cuba, fostering at once the growing power of slaveholders and a new spirit of rebellion among slaves, encouraging an antagonism that culminated in several failed slave conspiracies and rebellions.
When revolt broke out in 1791, Saint Domingue hosted eight hundred sugar plantations that together produced as much sugar as all of Britain’s Caribbean colonies combined. By its conclusion, sugar production had collapsed in Haiti along with slavery and French rule.
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/haiti-revolution-toussaint-louverture-cuba-aponte-rebellion-jacobins/
Evens Sanon, Associated Press
Updated 4:14 pm CDT, Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Photo: Dieu Nalio Chery, AP
IMAGE 1 OF 5
Sony Remond, a Haitian who has just been deported from the United States kneels on the tarmac at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, before he is to be transported to a hotel to undergo a 14-day mandated quarantine, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, June 23, 2020. ( AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A day after ex-paramilitary leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant was deported from the U.S., Haitian prosecutors on Wednesday ordered him transferred to the northern coastal town of Gonaives where authorities will decide whether the former strongman accused of murder and torture will be freed.
Prosecutor Maxine Auguste shared the decision with The Associated Press after meeting privately with Constant's attorney.
Constant became leader of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled in 1991 and is accused of killing, raping and torturing those loyal to the former leader. Human rights group allege that between 1991 and 1994, Constant’s group terrorized and slaughtered at least 3,000 slum dwellers who supported Aristide.
Constant fled Haiti when Aristide returned to power in 1994 with help from the U.S. military, and he remained in the U.S. until Tuesday despite a 1995 deportation order. In 2000, Constant was convicted in absentia in Haiti following a trial for the 1994 massacre in Raboteau, a Gonaives shantytown where Aristide supporters were killed.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Prosecutors-order-ex-Haiti-strongman-transferred-15364017.php
