U.S. to Haiti on possible release of Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant: Victims deserve justice
.JPG "Former paramilitary leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, left, is detained by Haitian police after his arrival at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, June 23, 2020.")
As concerns mount that Haitian former paramilitary leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant could become the latest accused torturer to walk free in Haiti, the U.S. government wants Haiti to know that it has a responsibility to carry out justice.
“The victims of the Raboteau massacre deserve justice, and the Haitian prosecutors have the responsibility to ensure accountability by making sure facts are presented and adjudicated,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told the Miami Herald.
Constant, 63, was deported last month by the Trump administration to Haiti, where he faces life imprisonment on murder and torture charges stemming from the killing of political opponents in the seaside village of Raboteau, outside of the city of Gonaives and north of the capital.
He and the paramilitary group he founded, the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s 1991 ouster by the Haitian army, have been linked to thousands of deaths, as well as rapes and torture of Aristide supporters.
The violence perpetrated by Constant, his paramilitary group and the army was a key reason for the 1994 U.S. intervention in Haiti. The Clinton administration deployed 20,000 troops to restore democracy.
Last week, the chief prosecutor assigned to Constant’s case, Sérard Gasius, told the Herald that he doesn’t have any documentation about Constant’s alleged crimes or his 2000 murder conviction in absentia for the 1994 Raboteau massacre.
Without any files, Gasius said, he may be left with no choice but to free Constant, who sits in a jail in the nearby city of St. Marc. Constant’s June 23 deportation came 26 years after he fled Haiti and two months after his April release from a New York state prison, where he served 12 years on federal grand larceny and mortgage fraud convictions.
“If there are no records or anything, I don’t think you can hold him in prison,” Gasius said. “He has rights.”
Gasius’ declaration immediately sent chills through human rights and diplomacy circles in Haiti, where Raboteau remains a stark reminder of not only a politically violent period but the ongoing difficulty that victims of such atrocities have in getting justice.
As recently as last year, two Haitian government officials and a former police officer-turned-gang leader were linked to a massacre in the La Saline slum in Port-au-Prince, where men, women and children as young as 4 were shot to death, their bodies then fed to dogs and pigs. No one has been held accountable despite calls for justice from human rights groups and the U.N. Security Council.
Justice has also been evasive in the Raboteau killings, despite two separate trials and dozens of convictions. One of the accused who was convicted in absentia along with Constant, Jean Robert Gabriel, today is a member of the high command of President Jovenel Moïse’s revived Haitian army.
Two Port-au-Prince human rights organizations, the Office of International Lawyers/Bureau des Avocats Internationaux and the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights/Réseau National de Défense des Droits de l’Homme, have questioned Gasius’ knowledge of the case and Haitian legal procedures following several press statements where the prosecutor said he had written to Haiti’s supreme court for a copy of its judgment in the case.
“This behavior ... risks a possible release of the criminal Emmanuel Toto Constant,” the groups wrote in an open letter to Gasius, in which it informed him there is no supreme court judgment because the verdict was administered in absentia.
The letter notes that there were two Raboteau trials, the first on Nov. 10, 2000, involving individuals who were tried in person and sentenced. The second, six days later, was for Constant and others who had fled Haiti. They were tried and sentenced in absentia by the Criminal Court of Gonaives.
While the Nov. 10 verdict was overturned in a controversial May 3, 2005, supreme court ruling that critics say was politically motivated, Constant’s life sentence was never appealed, therefore the supreme court would not have a copy of a judgment to provide prosecutors.
The human rights groups did, however, supply Gasius with several documents, including copies of the judgment against Constant and the Nov. 23, 2000, Monitor, the country’s official gazette, where it was published.
The Monitor and other documents recently discovered reveal that the first trial was for 20 detained defendants, all of whom were sentenced. The 2005 appeal reversed the sentences for six and confirmed the sentences for 14 others.
The second trial was for 37 defendants in absentia, and not 14 as previously reported. All were sentenced, including Constant, Gabriel and Raoul Cédras, the Haitian army officer who led the overthrow of Aristide and was the country’s de facto ruler from 1991 to 1994 before fleeing to exile in Panama.
Said the U.S. State Department: “We welcome the statement by human rights organization Réseau National de Défense des Droits de l’Homme providing case history.”
Added Morgan Ortagus, a spokesman: “We continue to look to the government of Haiti to hold Emmanuel Constant accountable for crimes committed in Haiti and to pursue justice for the victims of the Raboteau massacre.”
The burden is now on the Haitian government to demonstrate that it is able to uphold Haitian law and enforce judicial decisions. Under Haitian law governing convictions in absentia, Constant has the right to appeal his life sentence and get a new trial.
“We continue to look to the government of Haiti to hold Emmanuel Constant accountable for crimes committed in Haiti and to pursue justice for the victims of the Raboteau massacre,” said Morgan Ortagus.
Efforts are being made by others in the international community to provide copies of other Raboteau trial documents, as well as other documentation by the United Nations and the U.S. detailing the massacre and Constant’s paramilitary activities before he fled Haiti for New York on Dec. 24, 1994.
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 1:36 PM.
