The New York Times - USA (2020-10-10)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020 Y A

In Algiers four years ago, Su-
fyian Barhoumi’s mother found
him a bride. His brothers bought
kitchenware to help him open a
pizza parlor.
Now all Mr. Barhoumi needs is a
way out of the United States mili-
tary prison at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba, where he has been held for
the last 18 years.
Suspected by the United States
of being a jihadist bomb maker,
Mr. Barhoumi, 47, was cleared for
release in 2016 by a federal panel
that reviews the cases of wartime
prisoners who face no charges.
U.S. diplomats had negotiated his
repatriation with assurances from
the government in Algeria that it
would guard against him becom-
ing a security risk. Only a few final
arrangements remained before he
would become one of nearly 200
Guantánamo detainees to be re-
leased by the Obama administra-
tion following the 540 repatriated
or resettled by the Bush adminis-
tration.
But the family’s hopes of a
homecoming were dashed by the
election of President Trump. His
administration halted transfers,
dismantled the State Department
office that was negotiating them
and made clear that it was revers-
ing President Barack Obama’s ef-
forts to close the prison.
The kitchen supplies purchased
for Mr. Barhoumi are in storage,
members of his family said in a re-
cent interview. A bride still waits,
and his 69-year-old mother has
put on hold visions of “a normal
life with him,” her eldest son.
Mr. Barhoumi, who was
brought to Guantánamo in 2002
after being captured in Pakistan,
is one of five men among the 40
prisoners at Guantánamo who
had been approved for release but
did not get out before Mr. Trump
took office and changed U.S. pol-
icy.
On paper, they remain good to
go. And if Joseph R. Biden Jr. de-
feats Mr. Trump in the presiden-
tial election, the process of reduc-
ing the prison population could
begin again. Mr. Biden’s campaign
said in June that he still wanted to

close the prison, and his party platform adopted in the Demo- cratic National Convention pledged to do it. While Mr. Biden has not said how he would proceed, former Obama administration officials described him as having been fully engaged as vice president in seeking to relocate prisoners and close the detention center. While serving under Mr. Obama, Mr. Bi- den would raise transfer requests in calls with foreign leaders and bring up the topic in face-to-face meetings, they said. Lee Wolosky, who was Mr. Oba- ma’s special envoy for arranging Guantánamo transfers in 2015 and 2016, said his office had arrangements to repatriate two of the five cleared men — Mr. Barhoumi and a Moroccan, Abdul Latif Nasser, by the final month of the administration. Then the Trump administration abandoned the effort. “They have done nothing to fur- ther the deals in place when we left office in regard to the Moroc- cans and the Algerians and to arrange dispositions for the other three,” Mr. Wolosky said. “It takes a lot of work to get these things done.” The State Department so thor-

oughly dismantled the office that dealt with resettlement deals, Mr. Wolosky said, that Senegalese au- thorities telephoned him in 2018, long after he left government service, when a resettlement deal for a Libyan and a Tunisian soured. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, “It will be a complete disaster,” Mr. Barhoumi’s mother and a younger brother said in succession in a

Skype call. Mr. Barhoumi himself is more upbeat, according to his lawyer. During an Oct. 1 telephone call, Mr. Barhoumi said that “one way or the other he will go home, God willing, even if Trump is re- elected,” said the lawyer, Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attor- ney at the Center for Constitu- tional Rights. Mr. Trump pledged during his first campaign to fill up the cells at Guantánamo but has not done so. The prison had 41 detainees when he took office and now has 40. In May 2018, the Defense Depart- ment repatriated an admitted Al Qaeda terrorist to serve his war crimes sentence at Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation center for returning jihadists, a deal made in court in the Obama years. Only nine of the 40 detainees now at Guantánamo Bay have been charged with or convicted of war crimes. A renewed closure effort could make other uncharged prisoners eligible for transfer, par- ticularly those who might be eligible for medical repatriation. One candidate could be Mo- hammed al-Qahtani, 44, a Saudi prisoner who suffered an acute psychotic break attributed to

schizophrenia in his homeland even before he was taken to Guan- tánamo and tortured for two months. Over Justice Department objec- tions, his lawyers have obtained a court order for an outside medical review to determine if he would receive better care at a psychiat- ric hospital in Saudi Arabia. But the government could voluntarily send Mr. Qahtani home rather than permit what he is seeking, a visit by an independent medical panel made up of a U.S. Army medical officer and two other doc- tors from a foreign neutral country. For now, the five prisoners who have already been cleared for transfer are in limbo, living in the same cellblocks as the other gen- eral population prisoners who face no charges. Mr. Nasser, 55, had a repatriation arrangement like Mr. Barhoumi’s. But time ran out on his transfer to Morocco in the dwindling days of the Obama administration because Congress re- quires 30 days’ notice in advance of a transfer, and the Pentagon did not forward it in time. Since then, Mr. Nasser has gained some attention in a six- part podcast narrated by a public radio personality, Latif Nasser, who was struck by the similarity of their names and visited the prisoner’s family in Morocco and toured Guantánamo. No journalist has been allowed to interview a prisoner there, and Mr. Nasser was no exception. In- stead his production posed the question of whether his name- sake’s globe trotting, which took to him to an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, merited two decades of U.S. military detention following his capture in 2001 by Pakistani security forces. Another prisoner who is cleared for release with security guarantees is Tofiq al Bihani, 48, a Yemeni from a large Saudi-based family of brothers who joined the jihad. During the Obama years, Saudi Arabia agreed to accept him at its rehabilitation center. In early 2016, he was segregated at the prison with nine other men. The others were taken to a flight to Saudi Arabia. Without explana- tion, Mr. Bihani was left behind

and returned to the prison. “He is a kind, humorous, fun- loving guy,” said his long-serving lawyer George Clarke, who was furious at the reversal. “We joke with each other. He’s very inter- ested in finding a girlfriend or a wife.” The cases of the other two cleared prisoners are more com- plicated. One man is Tunisian, Ri- dah bin Saleh al Yazidi, 55, who was brought there in January 2002 and was approved for release a decade ago but has shown no interest in leaving. The other is a stateless Rohingyan, Muieen Abd al Sattar, 45. Before a typical release, a shackled prisoner sits across a ta- ble from representatives of a would-be host country or the In- ternational Committee of the Red Cross to express a willingness to follow the rules. During the years when the State Department was arranging transfers, neither man would leave his cell for such meetings. “Two of them had an opportuni- ty to get on an airplane and chose not to go,” Rear Adm. John C. Ring, a former prison commander, remarked in 2018. “So how bad could it be here?” Other defense and diplomatic officials across the years have described those two prisoners as too profoundly damaged — either mentally ill or accustomed to their institutionalization — to try to seek a way out. That would leave forced repatriation of Mr. Yazidi as one option. For now, Mr. Barhoumi’s brother and mother are still plan- ning for his return. They antici- pate that, like the other 17 Algeri- ans who were repatriated through the years, eight by the Bush administration and nine by the Obama administration, the Alge- rian government will detain him for questioning before he is re- leased to his family. Then, “he’ll live his life like a normal citizen so he can make up on the life he’s missed,” said his brother Samir. During a recent call from Guantánamo, Mr. Barhoumi asked his mother whether there was still a willing bride waiting for him. So she checked, and the woman replied: “God willing, when he gets back Only nine of the 40 Guantánamo Bay detainees have been charged with or convicted of war crimes. we’ll make it happen.”

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Cleared to Leave Guantánamo, Prisoners Were Kept by Trump

By CAROL ROSENBERG

This article was produced in part-
nership with the Pulitzer Center on
Crisis Reporting

Sufyian Barhoumi has been at Guantánamo Bay since 2002.

name. He is Elliott Broidy, not Elliot. The error was repeated in two picture captions.

An article on Friday about Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s faith community misstated the status of Arthur Wang’s medical training when he was torn about prescrib- ing contraceptives. He was a medical resident, not a medical student.

NATIONAL An article on Oct. 1 about the Indian Health Service’s chal- lenges in addressing the pandemic misstated the year Rear Adm. Michael D. Weahkee was appointed to lead the health service. He was appointed to lead the agency on an acting basis in June

FRONT PAGE An article on Friday about Presi- dent Trump’s criticism of his top officials for not prosecuting or implicating his political enemies referred incorrectly to a video of the president speaking on the White House lawn. While on first inspection it appeared that the backdrop might have been on a loop, a deeper examination by The Times and by Catalin Grigo- ras, a director at the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado, Denver, indicated no evidence of manipu- lation.

An article on Friday about a 2016 Trump campaign fund-raiser accused of evading foreign lobby- ing laws misspelled his given

2017, not in 2015. (He was con- firmed by the Senate in April.)

BUSINESS An article on Friday about stock market gains made by executives during the economic downturn set off by the pandemic misstated the month that Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of Moderna, received an option award. It was in January, not February.

ARTS A review on Friday of painting shows at galleries in Chelsea misspelled the surname of an artist showing at Berry Campbell gallery. He is Edward Avedisian, not Avesidian.

A review on Friday of the film “Time” misstated The New York Times’s involvement in producing it. The film was a co-production of The New York Times; it was not part of The Times’s Op-Docs series.

Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions.

Corrections

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The 45th President

MIAMI — A high school princi-
pal in Florida whose 2018 ex-
change with a parent about
whether the Holocaust was “a fac-
tual, historical event” led to an up-
roar, his firing and a case before a
judge, was reinstated Wednesday
after a school board vote.
The Palm Beach County school
board voted 4 to 3 on Wednesday
to rehire the principal, William
Latson, who was removed from
his post last year at Spanish River
Community High School in Boca
Raton after an email exchange
with a student’s parent came to
light. He will also receive full back
pay of about $152,300, according
to the board, which adopted the

recommended order of an admin-
istrative law judge.
Mr. Latson will be transferred
to a position within the district
that is “commensurate with his
qualifications,” the board decided.
A spokeswoman for the district
said he would not return as the
principal of Spanish River, and in-
stead would be assigned a posi-
tion outside a campus setting.
“Many have condemned him as
a Holocaust denier,” Mr. Latson’s
lawyer, Thomas Elfers, said in a
statement. “He isn’t. He never
was. He is a great guy and a great
educator.”
Mr. Latson oversaw Spanish
River High until he was re-
assigned in July 2019, after his
email exchange with a parent
drew an intense backlash in South
Florida.
“I can’t say the Holocaust is a
factual, historical event because I
am not in a position to do so as a
school district employee,” Mr. Lat-
son wrote in one of the emails,
which were obtained by The Palm
Beach Post. Mr. Latson said he
had to stay “politically neutral”
and separate his personal views
about the Holocaust from his job
as a public school official.
“I do allow information about
the Holocaust to be presented and
allow students and parents to
make decisions about it accord-

ingly,” he wrote. “I do the same with information about slavery. ... ” The publication of Mr. Latson’s emails drew national attention, and renewed a long and some- times bitter debate about the re- sponsibilities of educators at state schools. The school board was still divided at Wednesday’s vote. “I am not defending his stupid statements,” a school board member, Debra Robinson, said at the meeting. “They actually disgust me, but I don’t think his statements represent the body of his work.” Another school board member, Karen Brill, said his rehiring “is going to be a stain on this school district that will never go away, and it’s not just a local stain in Palm Beach County, it’s a national stain.” For about 90 minutes during the meeting, callers, including Jewish people and relatives of Holocaust survivors from around the country, urged the school board in recorded messages not to reinstate the principal. The regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Flor- ida, Sheri Zvi, said on Thursday that the group was disappointed that Mr. Latson would be reinstated because of his “disturbing comments about the Holo- caust and his failure to take re- sponsibility for them.” “We continue to believe that he should not be part of the Palm Beach County school system,” she said. Mr. Latson had been fired in late 2019, after the board voted 5 to 2 to accept the recommendation of the district superintendent, Donald E. Fennoy II, to remove him. Mr. Lat- son requested a hearing before a judge, and the case moved to the Division of Administrative Hear- ings in Tallahassee, Fla. This August, Judge Robert S. Cohen concluded that Mr. Latson should have been reprimanded or reassigned to another position at the Palm Beach County school district, but not fired. The judge said that Mr. Latson had “communicated well with students, teachers, and parents, ex- cept for the one parent.” He also said that the principal’s “choice of words and methods of trying to express that everyone at S.R.H.S. has the right to their individual be- liefs, even if they differed from the required, approved curriculum were unfortunate.”

Florida Principal Rehired

After Holocaust Dispute

By JOHNNY DIAZ

An outcry over an

email about staying

‘politically neutral.’

have to show you? If I’m free to go, then I’m not showing you any- thing.” He then declined to show them his arms and walked away. “Man, did you see the feds tried to stop me?” he says in the video. “ICE tried to stop me in my own neighborhood, bro.” The episode took place in West Roxbury, a neighborhood of tree- lined streets and mostly single- family homes in the southwest corner of Boston. The agents were in the neighborhood looking for a Haitian man who had previously been removed from the United States in 2008, ICE said on Friday. The man being sought has pending cocaine and fentanyl trafficking charges and he may have been residing in the area, the agency added. According to ICE, the agents identified themselves as law enforcement when they approached Mr. Apreala, who the agency said matched the description of the man they were searching for. “During the encounter, ICE officers determined the individual was not the subject of their investigation and that he did not have any additional information re- garding their subject or his where- abouts and was free to leave the scene,” the agency said in a statement. ICE has expanded its surveil- lance operations in at least nine cities, including Boston, that have refused to help with deportations. The video of the incident drew reactions from local and state officials. Mayor Marty Walsh of Bos- ton said on Twitter that the video

National and state officials are calling for an investigation after a Black jogger recorded himself being stopped and questioned by immigration agents this week in his Boston neighborhood. The jogger, Bena Apreala, 29, was not arrested during the stop on Tuesday, but after his video was shared widely, lawmakers and officials condemned the encounter and called the footage disturbing. Mr. Apreala, a Massachusetts real estate agent, told the Boston radio station WBUR that the men did not identify themselves as law enforcement and questioned him about his identity when they approached him. “These guys just hopped out in full camouflage uniforms with masks over their face and stopped me,” Mr. Apreala said, according to the station, adding that the agents told him to identify himself. “I was confused as to whether or not they were even legitimate authority.” He recorded the end of the episode in a short video — less than a minute long — that was lat- er uploaded to Facebook. The be- ginning of the video shows at least three U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents let- ting Mr. Apreala go before asking him whether he had any tattoos on his arms — “just so we can con- firm, and we’ll be out of here.” In the video, Mr. Apreala asks the men: “Am I free to go? Do I

was “extremely disturbing” to watch. “Racial profiling and stops like these are wrong, unjustified, and will not be tolerated,” he wrote. Matt O’Malley, who represents West Roxbury on the Boston City Council, called the encounter an “unlawful stop” and said that he would pursue the issue with federal representatives. Representative Ayanna Press- ley, Democrat of Massachusetts, also called for an immediate investigation. “We must understand what they were doing and rationale behind their deployment,” she said on Twitter. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said that her office had reached out to ICE for more information. “People are rightly terrified of ICE & this secrecy only makes things worse,” she said on Twitter. “I expect answers, & our local, state & federal officials do too.” The A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts, which is representing Mr. Apre- ala, is also investigating the encounter. “This incident raises serious constitutional questions and is disturbing on a human level,” Rah- saan Hall, director of the racial justice program at the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts, said in a statement. Mr. Apreala’s mother, Patricia Apreala, told NBC10 Boston, “I have too many videos running in my head about young Black males with law enforcement, and it was not a pretty sight.”

The encounter comes as polic- ing and race have received more scrutiny after the killings of Black men by the police and others have ignited nationwide protests. On Feb. 23, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25- year-old Black man, was killed by armed white men as he jogged in his Georgia neighborhood. In March, Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker, was fatally shot by Louisville police officers during a botched raid on her apartment. George Floyd, a 46- year-old Black man, died on May 25 after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee. And in June, there was the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was found asleep in a car in a drive- through at a Wendy’s.

Officials Call for Inquiry After ICE Agents Stop Black Jogger

By JOHNNY DIAZ and CHRISTINA MORALES

Bena Apreala recorded himself being stopped and questioned.

BENA APREALA, VIA MICHELLE LYNNE

The New York Times - USA (2020-10-10)

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