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NEW YORK, May 16 (IPS) – One of Haiti's key paramilitary leaders is in a U.S. detention centre awaiting deportation to Haiti, but his opponents still wonder if he will receive his just desserts.

The U.S. government has said it will extradite Emmanuel 'Toto' Constant, founder of the dreaded military-linked Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), to stand trial for his alleged role in human right violations in Haiti.

But, despite U.S. authorities' capture of Constant on May 10, human rights advocates remain suspicious of the links between Washington and the FRAPH leader.

Constant has admitted to being a paid agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since 1991, when a military junta ousted elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Although that link has since been cut, some experts worry those ties could impede a fair trial of the FRAPH founder.

''The test will reflect itself in the amount of information that (U.S.) secret service agencies will be willing to hand over to (Haitian) authorities,'' says Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of New York's National Coalition for Haitian Refugees.

McCalla contends that agencies like the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have little interest in providing potentially embarrassing evidence of their ties to a brutal organisation like FRAPH. Consequently, some of the most damaging material linking Constant to Haiti's political violence during the 1991-94 military regime may never come to light.

He adds that already, the lack of desire on the part of those agencies to investigate FRAPH is evident.

''Obviously, the United States didn't make a lot of effort to find Constant,'' McCalla says. ''They could have given the job to an agency such as the FBI … which is able to find people who are of high interest to the United States.''

But he notes, ''Instead, they handed the job over to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS). The only way INS identifies people who are deportable is through tips from the public.''

In fact, that is how U.S. officials caught up with Constant, who entered the United States on a multiple-entry visa last December, and then stayed in hiding in Queens, New York, once the government revoked that visa in March.

Rudolph Brewington, a spokesman for INS, says the agency found him in Queens after receiving a tip from an informer. After that, he adds, they arrested him and placed him at a detention centre in Winimico, Maryland, where he now awaits deportation.

While he is there, says Allyson Collins, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch/Americas (HRW), U.S. officials#might be able to question him about scores of atrocities during the junta.

Constant, for example, is known to have been on the CIA payroll in Oct 1993, when FRAPH first garnered public attention after it organised demonstrations that prevented the U.S. cruiser 'Harlan County' from docking in Port-au-Prince.

He is also suspected of involvement in many of the roughly 4,000 political murders between Aristide's Sept 1991 ouster and his return to power, backed by a U.S.-led force, in Oct 1994.

Michael Ratner, a New York attorney, has in fact sued Constant and FRAPH in U.S. courts for his alleged human rights atrocities. He is seeking punitive damages against FRAPH for its alleged assault in Oct 1993 on an Aristide supporter, Alerte Belance, who now lives in the United States.

''FRAPH's brutal attack on (Belance) left her abandoned for dead, with her right arm severed, her tongue cut nearly in two, and deep gashes in her head, mouth and neck,'' Ratner's suit, filed in New York, claims.

Moreover, Ratner argues, Belance and supporters of her case have been threatened by FRAPH members in the United States — a sign that the group, largely dormant since Aristide's return, still has clout here.

But the problems FRAPH poses in the United States are dwarfed by the threat that military-linked groups still hold for Aristide's fragile democracy.

Collins of HRW says the United States should hold off on extraditing Constant until Haiti's judiciary can cope with the challenge of keeping a major militia leader in detention.

''There have been a lot of escapes from different prisons in (Haiti),'' Collins says. ''We don't want that to happen with Constant.''

''Frankly, there are no jails that can keep him there,'' agrees McCalla. Even Port-au-Prince's dreaded National Penitentiary has been the site of major jail-breaks, he says, accusing wardens linked to the military regime of helping their former comrades.

He adds the judicial system still needs improvements before it can give Constant a fair trial. ''Haitian authorities should refrain from having a show trial, and it's not clear to me they will do that,'' he says.

But Constant, whose family has been linked for generations to the former ruling Duvalier family, may not have to face a trial that could embarrass his onetime U.S. supporters until after Aristide steps down next year.

He is entitled to apply for political asylum, and also has the right to several appeals if his application is rejected. U.S. courts may also detain him if they seek information in the Belance case.

''That process could take several months, and could in fact outlast the Aristide government,'' McCalla says — possibly letting Washington off the hook for one of its many unsavoury connections during its long involvement with Haiti. (end/ips/fah/yjc/95)

Origin: Washington/HAITI/

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[c] 1994, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)

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