On January 9 in Brooklyn, New York, former death-squad leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, 51, rejected a plea bargain that would have sentenced him to three to nine years for his role in a mortgage fraud crime ring.
Toto Constant
Under the deal for charges brought in Kings County, Constant, with time served and good behavior, would have been eligible for parole in July, at which time the Department of Homeland Security would have deported him back to Haiti.
Instead, Toto elected to go to trial, where he risks a maximum sentence of 45 years if a jury finds him guilty on all counts of grand larceny, forgery, and falsifying business records. Arrested in July 2006, Constant has been held in the Coxsackie Prison in upstate New York, serving time on a one to three year sentence for pleading guilty in a deal struck last February on mortgage fraud charges in Suffolk County on Long Island.
Toto Constant is the founder and former leader of the CIA-supported death-squad known as the Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH). Assembled by Constant in 1993 during the first coup d’état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, FRAPH militants carried out murder, rape, arson and violent demonstrations to terrorize the Haitian people. Some 5,000 Haitians are estimated to have died during the 1991 to 1994 coup, many at the hands of the FRAPH.
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