Francois Emmanuel "Toto" Constant

Virtual Truth Commission [1 August 1998]

1992

Constant stated Col. Patrick Collins, an officer of the U. S. Defense Intelligence Agency, approached him soon after Aristide's ouster and pushed him to organize a front that could balance the Aristide movement and do intelligence work against it. This resulted in Constant forming what evolved into FRAPH in August 1993. William Blum, Haiti 1986-1994: Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Priest? excerpted from the book, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.

1993

1993-1994 Leader of FRAPH death squad that murdered hundreds of Haitians in these years. Haiti Briefing, #29, Aug 1998, Haiti Support Group, London, UK, Contact haitisupport@gn.apc.org
On the morning of December 27, 1993, as the sun rises over the tin roofs of the shantytown of Cite Soleil, a snow-cone vendor awakes to the sound of screams and the smell of smoke in the air. He leaps from bed and rushes to the doorfor the last time. Men with guns force him into the courtyard. From inside, his wife hears three gunshots. According to her sworn affidavit, the next time she sees her husband will be at the morgue. Around seven or eight o'clock in the morning the next witness testimonies begin, narrating a chronicle of death. Gunfire rat-tat-tats. A young student looks out the window to see a wall of fire rising above the rooftops. People flee their houses into the narrow allies of the slums. In hot pursuit come the familiar faces of the town's worst fear: FRAPH--the Haitian death squads. They have circled the zone with gasoline. As residents try to escape the gunmen force them, even children, back into their burning houses at gunpoint. By noon 1,053 houses in all have been burned to the ground, and fifty charred corpses lie in the smoldering ruins. Four years later, the site of the Cite Soleil massacre is a cinderblock ghost town and Emmanuel Toto Constant, leader of the FRAPH death squads, lives in the United States. Catherine Orenstein with Eva Rybkova, A Killer In Our Midst A version of this article first appeared in the July/August 1, 1998 issue of Emerge: Black America's News Magazine.
Acknowledged former CIA employee. Haiti Briefing, #29, Aug 1998, Haiti Support Group, London, UK, Contact haitisupport@gn.apc.org
In October 1993, Constant led hostile mob of armed thugs which turned away the U. S. S. Harlan County, dispatched to safeguard Aristide's reentry to Haiti. Haiti: a history of foreign intervention
Constant later revealed that he was on the CIA payroll. Haiti: a history of foreign intervention
Constant came to world attention at the height of the coup regime, on October 10, 1993, when the US sent a ship with a cargo of 200 soldiers to help restore the exiled President Aristide to power. But Constant and a small gang of FRAPH thugs at the Port-au-Prince wharf staged a riot and the USS Harlan County never docked. As a result Washington balked, President Aristide's scheduled return was aborted and the putschists ruled for another year - and not by accident. Constant says he had discussed the FRAPH demonstration with the CIA station chief, Kambourian, in advance, and that this was exactly the US intention. The whole affair was a bluff, he says, which the CIA exaggerated to give Washington an excuse to back off. It was a turning point-after that we knew we could get away with anything. When the ruse was reported in the news, the White House portrayed the CIA as a renegade agency pursuing an agenda contradictory to American policy. But that isn't true, either, claims Constant. The biggest secret of all, he says, is that CIA policy was American policy. The US didn't want President Aristide to go back. ...Constant claims that he became a key part of covert American policy to undermine the exiled President Aristide, who was viewed as too radical by the United States. He says Kambourian told him a plan which began with allowing the international embargo on the military regime to leak. It did --notoriously: So much gasoline got in that Haitians dubbed the gas market Little Kuwait, and a well-established factory owner in Port-au-Prince admits that his production skyrocketed during the coup years when foreign companies took advantage of the plummeting exchange rate. A second part of the plan, according to Constant, involved generating propaganda that would cast a dour light on diplomatic efforts to restore Aristide. Constant kept a binder entitled Lavalas and Terrorism, which he showed to reporters--including one of the authors--who visited Haiti during the coup years. Higher up, Brian Latelle, a national intelligence officer and the Haiti point man for US policy, wrote a document stating Aristide was mentally unfit and named a hospital in Canada that later proved to be phony. But most importantly, claims Constant, Kambourian said there needed to be resistance to Aristide's return in the streets of Haiti. That was where FRAPH came in. Catherine Orenstein with Eva Rybkova, A Killer In Our Midst A version of this article first appeared in the July/August 1, 1998 issue of Emerge: Black America's News Magazine.
Constant attended, on invitation, the Clinton inauguration balls in 1993. Later that year, on 11 October 1993, while on the CIA payroll, Constant organized the dockside mob that chased off a ship carrying U. S. military personnel arriving to retrain the Haitian military under the UN agreement. Garner Gollatz, Bad Companym The Brown Daily Herald, Inc., Wednesday, April 19, 1995
Yet even as his underlings raped, killed, and brandished machetes at American marines, Constant was on the CIA payroll. Nor did the payments stop, government officials have said, until the spring of 1993 -- after two well-documented years of FRAPH political killings. The CIA insists that it was paying him to inform on FRAPH activities....Constant's own words suggest a somewhat different relationship between Company and crook. Before vanishing into exile, he said in an interview with reporter Allan Nairn that a military attaché at the American agency had actually encouraged him to form FRAPH in the first place. Not only that, he claimed, but the attaché and the local CIA station chief were inside the Haitian military headquarters when the army staged its coup in '91. Garner Gollatz, Bad Company in The Brown Daily Herald, Inc., Wednesday, April 19, 1995
1993 Assassination Lawyer Michael Ratner, who defended Haitian refugees detained at the US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba during the coup and worked closely with the Haitian government in 1995 in an attempt to prosecute coup criminals like Constant, now leads a CCR lawsuit against FRAPH here in the U.S.. In one of the more remarkable documents released to the CCR in our on-going lawsuit against FRAPH, Constant is said to have been in on the planning of the [1993] assassination of [Haitian Justice Minister] Guy Malary, Ratner's written testimony to the City Council asserts. That document was a CIA report which states that FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary. Ratner read the Haitian government's extradition request. Source: New York City Council Zeroes in on 'Toto' Constant, in This Week in Haiti, Wed, September 23-29, 1998 * Vol. 16, No. 27 (the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.) For information on other news in French and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100, (fax) 718-434-5551 or email at haiti-progres@prodigy.net.

1994

A Killer In Our Midst A version of this article first appeared in the July/August 1, 1998 issue of Emerge: Black America's News Magazine.

1996

Deportation suspended. Constant faces charges of murder, torture and arson in Haiti, and the Haitian government has asked for his extradition from his current home in New York. But the US suspended a deportation order, and then agreed that Constant could remain in the US with a work permit and self-deport at any time to a third country of his choice, effectively allowing him to escape justice. The US decision flouts its commitment under the United Nations torture convention to extradite or bring to trial suspected torturers. Haiti: US makes a mockery of justice, Haiti Briefing, #29, Aug 1998, Haiti Support Group, London, UK, Contact haitisupport@gn.apc.org
Constant was held in the U. S. for extradition for over a year but was later released because, according to U. S officials, Haitian courts could not handle his return. Constant, who masterminded the torture, rape, and murder of thousands of Aristide supporters, is now living without surveillance in Queens, New York. Haiti: a history of foreign intervention
June, 1996. Constant was released from an immigrant detention center in Maryland and given a green card to live and work in the U.S.. (see Haiti Progres, Vol. 14 No. 13 6/19/98). For the two years since then, he has lived in Queens, New York, trying to stay out of the public eye. The low profile is required by the secret deal which Francois Emmanuel Toto Constant made with various agencies of the U.S. government when he was released. Source: New York City Council Zeroes in on 'Toto' Constant, in This Week in Haiti, Wed, September 23-29, 1998 * Vol. 16, No. 27 (the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.) For information on other news in French and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100, (fax) 718-434-5551 or email at haiti-progres@prodigy.net.
Constant's Deal After the US Invasion Constant fled Haiti and slipped into the United States on a tourist visa on Christmas Eve, 1994. After human rights groups learned of his presence Secretary of State Warren Christopher declared him persona non grata and Constant was arrested and ordered deported. Only that never happened. Instead in a startling reversal the US Department of Justice struck a secret sweetheart deal with the death squad leader and set him free in exchange for his silence. It turns out that throughout the coup years the man portrayed as the nemesis of US policy with Haiti was on the American payroll. With encouragement from the American Central Intelligence Agency he formed a right wing group intended to counter President Aristide's left-leaning Lavalas movement which the US government officially supported but unofficially loathed. Constant's group eventually became FRAPH. Officially the American State Department dubbed FRAPH a terrorist organization. Secretly, the CIA paid Constant $700 a month for his services, and intelligence sources confirmed that he met regularly with the CIA station chief in Haiti, John Kambourian, throughout the bloodiest days of the coup. But after the coup, the relationship soured. I was their lapdog when things were going well, says Constant, serving liver and corn meal on a little china plate. But when the party ended, I became an embarrassment. They put me in jail. They called me a human rights abuser....when he was arrested and ordered deported, Constant thought it only fair to call the American bluff. From his jail cell the leader of the Haitian death squads began to blackmail his erstwhile employers. In December 1995 he gave an interview to the mainstream television news magazine 60 Minutes, announcing to a national audience that he was an agent of the CIA. Then he sued the US government, claiming that the US deportation order was unconstitutional and rather ironically that it was intended to besmirch his reputation. ....The lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by these reporters, explained Constant's rise to power with the CIA and threatened to make public what Constant knew about American policy in Haiti: mainly, that it was dirty.... On June 14 1996, Constant says, he was pulled from his cell and marched through the Wicomico Detention Center in his bright orange inmate's jumper to the Booking area where, as he changed into civilian clothes, a settlement deal rolled out of the prison's fax machine. The 5-page document set Constant free in the United States and enabled him to get a work permit. In exchange Constant would remain in Queens, check-in at INS headquarters once a week, and decline from speaking to press or public. Catherine Orenstein with Eva Rybkova, A Killer In Our Midst A version of this article first appeared in the July/August 1, 1998 issue of Emerge: Black America's News Magazine.
FRAPH alive and well in 1996. Former death-squad leader, former CIA agent, former unofficial spokesperson for the military and paramilitary forces which held Haiti hostage from 1991 to 1994, Constant today remains a terrorist because his very presence brings fear to the Haitian community of New York and Long Island, just as he did to the residents of Haiti only four years ago. He recently assured reporters that his infamous Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, known as the FRAPH, is alive and well and functioning both in Haiti and in the U.S.. Source: New York City Council Zeroes in on 'Toto' Constant, in This Week in Haiti, Wed, September 23-29, 1998 * Vol. 16, No. 27 (the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.) For information on other news in French and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100, (fax) 718-434-5551 or email at haiti-progres@prodigy.net.
Demands for Return to Haiti The Haitian community in New York and its supporters have not taken Constant's presence lying down. On Jul. 29, 1996, a demonstration was held outside the U.S. Federal Building in lower Manhattan, demanding that the U.S. government return Constant to Haiti along with the 160,000 documents which U.S. soldiers stole from the headquarters of the Haitian Army (FADH) and FRAPH in 1994. In 1995, the Haitian government formally asked for both the extradition of Constant back to Haiti as well as return of the documents. To date, the U.S. government has refused both requests, safeguarding both their former employee and the documents which would provide evidence of his crimes. In 1997, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), in conjunction with the Haiti Support Network (HSN) and the Alliance of Haitian Emigres, launched a campaign to return Constant to Haiti. The groups held two demonstrations in front of Constant's house in Queens. They also launched a campaign to lobby legislatures at all levels of government to condemn Constant's asylum in New York, beginning with the New York City Council. Source: New York City Council Zeroes in on 'Toto' Constant, in This Week in Haiti, Wed, September 23-29, 1998 * Vol. 16, No. 27 (the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.) For information on other news in French and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100, (fax) 718-434-5551 or email at haiti-progres@prodigy.net.
Actions in New York City Council Councilman Wendell Foster and Speaker Peter Vallone, the head of the City Council and the Democratic Party nominee for governor of New York State, sponsored Resolution #82 which calls upon the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service and the United States Department of State to honor the request of the Haitian government for the extradition or deportation of Francois Emmanuel Toto Constant to Haiti where he can stand trial for his crimes. Noting that FRAPH committed crimes against humanity and violations of numerous international treaties and conventions, the resolution also says that Constant's presence in Queens constitutes a potential threat and danger to the citizens of New York City, particularly to Haitians, some of whom were victims of FRAPH. It further states that the refusal of the Department of State and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to return Francois Constant to Haiti is unconscionable. The first hearing on this resolution was held in New York's City Hall on Sep. 16. Dozens of Haitians turned out to hear people speak out about the terror of the FRAPH and how they did not want Constant in town. Constant heads the Haitian paramilitary organization which is responsible for the wave of terror which resulted in murder, maiming, rape, and interrogation of countless thousands of Haitians during the coup regime which toppled the democratically elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, said Ron Daniels, executive director of the CCR, who launched the Campaign to return Constant to Haiti after he ran into Constant in his local Queens post office. Mr. Constant, our city, this state, and indeed the world must know that the laws and policies of the United States are intended to provide protection for people fleeing from persecution and not shield people who are persecutors. Mitchell Cohen of the Green Party of New York also supported the resolution. Some of my relatives and their friends were killed in concentration camps during World War II in Nazi Germany, Cohen said. I view the return of Emmanuel Constant to Haiti as similar to the return to Israel of [renowned Nazi criminal] Adolph Eichmann to stand trial for crimes against the people and the murder of innocent people in Nazi Germany. Speaker after speaker emphasized the fear that Haitians feel testifying against Constant. Vivian Stromberg of the human rights group MADRE read an affidavit of a woman who was still afraid to be publicly identified after she was beaten and raped by three FRAPH members in Haiti in 1994. The people of Haiti have a right to justice. They have the right to make their claims against Constant and the members of the FRAPH in a court of law in Haiti, Stromberg said. Harboring him not only prevents the victims of the terror from obtaining justice, it allows him to terrorize and terrify Haitians in living in New York and their families at home in Haiti. Source: New York City Council Zeroes in on 'Toto' Constant, in This Week in Haiti, Wed, September 23-29, 1998 * Vol. 16, No. 27 (the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.) For information on other news in French and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100, (fax) 718-434-5551 or email at haiti-progres@prodigy.net.

1998

July 1998. In interview with US magazine Emerge, claims that his organisation is still operating in Haiti, and that, together with former soldiers, he is planning to engineer the return to power of former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. Haiti Briefing, #29, Aug 1998, Haiti Support Group, London, UK, Contact haitisupport@gn.apc.org
Intimidation by FRAPH in New York. Kim Ives, who writes for Haiti Progres, testified about interviewing victims of the FRAPH in Haiti during the coup and about the FRAPH's on-going surveillance of Return Constant demonstrations here in New York. He also told about an obscene anti-Aristide pro-Duvalier fax that Haiti Progres had received only one month ago from Lionel Sterling, the head of FRAPH's New York chapter. This is the kind of psychological warfare that the FRAPH is engaged in here in New York, keeping people fearful, while in Haiti the same war is being carried out by armed gangs who kill at least a dozen people every week, Ives said. The armed gangs were formerly the FRAPH gangs but now they work as anonymous criminals. You can't see them as clearly, but the FRAPH terror continues. Ricot Dupuy, the director of Brooklyn-based Radio Soleil d'Haiti, followed with an emotional account of Constant's attempts to intimidate the Haitian community on Nostrand Avenue in general and his radio in particular. Constant had recently come around that heavily Lavalas neighborhood. We are respectful of the law, and we said we will not allow him to provoke us into some illegal reaction. We are going to let the law follow its course. We have faith in all the Council members here, Dupuy said. Toto Constant, as far as Haitians are concerned, is the greatest terrorist on earth today. So let's put an end to hypocrisy. Let's do what's right. Let's return this man to Haiti to be punished. Source: New York City Council Zeroes in on 'Toto' Constant, in This Week in Haiti, Wed, September 23-29, 1998 * Vol. 16, No. 27 (the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.) For information on other news in French and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100, (fax) 718-434-5551 or email at haiti-progres@prodigy.net.
In 1998 Constant frequents the club scene in Manhattan, sells MCI phone cards on commission in his spare time, and on the weekends he relaxes in his family's elegant two-story home in the Laurelton neighborhood of Queens, New York...You know what people don't understand, he says exhaling smoke through his nostrils, is that it's me, Emmanuel, who is also a victim. Now that the military regime has disbanded, the 40-year-old fugitive is applying for political asylum in the United Stateswhich would allow him to become an American citizen and help him to escape justice forever. Catherine Orenstein with Eva Rybkova, A Killer In Our Midst. A version of this article first appeared in the July/August 1, 1998 issue of Emerge: Black America's News Magazine