29389: (news) Chamberlain: Haitian warlord ordered to pay $19 mln to victims (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Matthew Verrinder

     NEW YORK, Oct 25 (Reuters) - A Haitian warlord who had been living in
New York City as a real estate agent was ordered by a U.S. court on Tuesday
to pay $19 million to three women who say they were raped and had their
breasts slashed by his men.
     U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein found that Emmanuel "Toto" Constant
was "liable for torture, attempted extrajudicial killing and crimes against
humanity," court documents showed.
     Constant founded a paramilitary group in Haiti in 1993 to torture
supporters of overthrown president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He fled Haiti in
1994 when Aristide regained power, becoming a real estate agent in New
York's borough of Queens.
     Many Haitian immigrants in Queens recognized Constant at bars and
nightclubs from newspaper clippings and news reports as the vicious
warlord, but were fearful of confronting him.
     Constant is in jail on Long Island after being charged in a $1 million
mortgage fraud scheme last July. It is not known if the women will ever see
any of money, said Jennie Green, senior attorney at the Center for
Constitutional Rights.
     The three women sued Constant last year in a U.S. court in Manhattan,
claiming he authorized the attacks.
     "Constant's conduct was clearly malicious," Stein wrote in the ruling.
The organization he founded "was dedicated principally toward terrorizing
and torturing political opponents of the military regime," the judge wrote.
     Constant's leadership of the group "constitutes an inexcusable
violation of international law and merits a stiff punishment."
     Each of the women was awarded $5 million in punitive damages. Two of
them were awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages while the third was
awarded $1 million.
     Two of the three unnamed women or their spouses were involved in
Haitian pro-democracy groups after Aristide was ousted and said Constant's
death squads regularly appeared at their doors in the middle of the night
to silence them.
     One of the women, whose husband was an activist involved in local
politics, repeatedly demanded information about him when he vanished in
1992, according to court documents.
     Because of her persistence, she was gang-raped in front of her three
children during one attack and her left breast slashed open in another, the
documents show. She became pregnant as a result of the rapes and later gave
birth.
     Another plaintiff whose husband was an activist but did not support
the coup was also raped in front of her three children by masked men in
1991 and later shot in the leg.