Ex-Haitian Strongman Held in Fraud Case

[NorthernSun]

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Despite protests by prosecutors and a human rights group, a judge set bail at $50,000 Friday for an elusive former strongman from Haiti arrested in a Long Island mortgage fraud probe.

The bail for Emmanuel "Toto" Constant was set by state Supreme Court Justice Michael Mullen at an arraignment on charges of grand larceny, forgery and falsifying business records.

Prosecutors asked that Constant be held without bail, citing his 2000 murder conviction in Haiti and a pending lawsuit alleging his forces gang-raped women. A lawyer with the San Francisco-based human rights group Center for Justice and Accountability, which represents three women in the gang-rape lawsuit, also said Constant was dangerous and should remain jailed

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4031943.html

Must be a 'friend of Bush'

[struggle4progress]

1. "Constant discussed his relationship with the CIA on CBS' Sixty Minutes"

http://www.quixote.org/hr/campaigns/toto-constant/

... 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 ... 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 ... http://www.haitiaction.net/News/CJA/1_14_5.html

Thug with CIA ties, involved in the terror after the 1991 overthrow of Aristide during the reign of Bush I ...