Jared Moya
October 30th, 2006, 01:08 AM
NEW YORK (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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/25/AR2006102501290.html
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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/25/AR2006102501290.html