Emmanuel Constant, founder of FRAPH, was born 70 years ago

Seventy years ago, on October 27, 1956, Emmanuel Constant, nicknamed Toto, was born in Port-au-Prince. A military commander, he is associated with the repression that followed the coup of 1991.

The FRAPH

Around mid-1993, Constant created the FRAPH, the Armed Revolutionary Front for the Progress of Haiti, a paramilitary group that terrorized supporters of the exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A CIA source, which the agency described as unverified, implicated him in the assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary in 1993. According to American officials and himself, he was paid by the CIA from 1992 to 1994, at a rate of about $500 per month.

Convictions

In 2001, a Haitian court convicted him in absentia to life imprisonment for his role in the Raboteau massacre. In 2008, he was found guilty of mortgage fraud and sentenced to twelve to thirty-seven years in prison. He was then held at the Eastern Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in New York.