I've written about Toto Constant before and I suppose I'll post about him again, but it's gratifying to see him facing some measure of justice:
A former Haitian paramilitary leader once widely feared in his country was accused at trial Monday of becoming a common white-collar criminal once he fled to the United States.
Emmanuel ''Toto'' Constant helped hatch a mortgage fraud scheme that cheated lenders out of $1.7 million, prosecutors alleged at the trial in Brooklyn. He faces five to 15 years in prison if convicted of second-degree grand larceny.
The case will show that Constant, 51, was ''a crook as well as human rights violator,'' said Jennie Green, a senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights group monitoring the trial.
In opening statements, defense attorney Samuel Karlinger told jurors his client was framed by others who took plea deals and whose ``motivation is to keep themselves out of jail.''
Constant, the 6-foot-4 son of a military officer, emerged as the notorious leader of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, or FRAPH, after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled in 1991.
This, by the way, is still nonsense:
Despite a 1995 deportation order, Constant was allowed to remain because of instability in Haiti.
Hundreds if not thousands of Haitians have been deported back to Haiti, many with legitimate fears of persecution. The very idea that someone as thoroughly vile as Toto Constant could effectively get asylum in this country, while an 81 year old minister whose church was destroyed by a gang, Joseph Danticat is left to die in detention, makes that claim an out-and-out lie. It flies in the face of logic that Constant, whose gang threatened a US peacekeeping force from entering Haiti in 1994 could then be allowed to seek safety here is offensive to anyone with the slightest concern about human rights. We know why he's here.
Shame on the Clinton administration for letting him in; shame on the Bush administration for letting him stay.
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