On July 25 a jury in Brooklyn, New York, convicted right-wing paramilitary leader Emmanuel ("Toto") Constant of mortgage fraud. He faces a 5-to-15 prison sentence in New York, followed by deportation to Haiti. "The trial proved there is rampant fraud in the mortgage industry," said Constant's lawyer, Samuel Karliner. "His role was minor." But attorney Jennie Green from the New York-based nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) expressed a "hope that after [Constant] serves a stiff sentence in New York, he faces trial" for crimes in Haiti that included "murder and rape and other torture of thousands." (New York Daily News, July 25; CCR press release, July 25)

On June 23 Haitian president Rene Preval nominated economist Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis to succeed acting prime minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was forced to resign on April 12 following violent protests over the rising cost of food. Preval made two other nominations before naming Pierre-Louis; Parliament rejected both. Pierre-Louis was an official at the National Airport Authority from 1979 to 1982, during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc," 1971-1986), and held a cabinet post in the first administration of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991.

Some 100 members of the 19th US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, an annual shipment of humanitarian aid organized by the New York-based group Pastors for Peace, arrived in Havana on July 5. Reverend Lucius Walker led the delegation, which was met at the José Martí International Airport by Communist Party and religious leaders. Pastors for Peace has been collecting and shipping aid to Cuba since 1992. To challenge the 46-year-old US trade embargo against Cuba, the group refuses to request a license from the US Treasury Department for the shipment.

On June 12 Haiti's Chamber of Deputies voted 57-22 with six abstentions to reject President Rene Garcia Preval's latest nominee for prime minister, Robert Manuel. A commission assigned to study Manuel's qualifications found that he failed to meet two requirements in the 1987 Constitution: he didn't own property in Haiti and he hadn't lived in the country for the last five years consecutively. Manuel is a longtime friend of Preval and was the security chief during Preval's first term as president (1996-2001). The Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide pushed for Manuel's removal in 1999, and he left the country, returning near the end of 2005.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a brief official visit to Haiti on May 28. During the few hours before he headed off for a tour of Central America, Lula had a private conversation with Haitian president Rene Garcia Preval, took part in a signing ceremony for six agreements (including accords on agriculture, education and women's rights), and visited the headquarters of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a 9,000-member military force headed by Brazil.

More than 1,000 people, mostly peasants, marched through the streets of Savanette, near the Dominican border in Haiti's Central Plateau region, on May 19 to protest the local government's failure to issue proper identity papers. The march also commemorated the 88th anniversary of the assassination of Benoit Batraville ("Ti Benwa"), the commander of the KAKO peasant army, which fought against a 1915-1934 military occupation by the US.

The Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants reports that at least 1,693 Haitians were deported from the Dominican Republic in the first four months of 2008. The mass repatriations are "almost always marked by violations of the migrants' human rights," the group said, noting that some immigrants reported that soldiers released the Haitians who could afford to pay bribes. (Adital, May 9)

Foreign troops and not Haitian demonstrators killed Spanish journalist Ricardo Ortega in Port-au-Prince during a protest on March 7, 2004, according to the reporter's family. Haitian judge Bernard Saint-Vil has dismissed charges against the Haitian suspects in the killing, Ortega's parents, Jose Luis and Charo Ortega, told the media in Madrid on May 9; Saint-Vil reportedly blamed the foreign soldiers deployed in the country during the three months after then-president Jean Bertrand Aristide was removed from office on Feb. 29, 2004.