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Vol. 72/No. 44      November 10, 2008

 
Hatian rightist faces up to
37 years for fraud charges
 
BY SAM MANUEL  
Emmanuel Constant, the leader of a rightist death squad in Haiti in the 1990s, was sentenced up to 37 years in prison October 28. He was convicted in a mortgage fraud scheme in the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York. Constant was charged and convicted of setting up fake home buyers, giving false information on applications, and inflating appraisals that swindled lenders out of more than $1 million, reported the New York Times. He was given a prison term of 12 to 37 years.

Constant led the Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a rightist outfit that was responsible for the deaths of thousands of supporters of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and toppled his government in 1991. Sections of the Haitian military trained and armed FRAPH members. Constant fled to the United States when Aristide returned to Haiti after 18,000 U.S. troops invaded and occupied the island. He surfaced in Queens, New York, where he set up a real estate agency.

Deportation proceedings against Constant were suddenly dropped in 1995 after he threatened on the 60 Minutes news program to expose CIA involvement in the formation of FRAPH.  
 
 
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