"Kerry calls for N. Korea to free Bostonian; Activist was sentenced to eight years hard labor" by James F. Smith, Globe Staff | April 8, 2010
Aijalon Mahli Gomes quickly outgrew his Mattapan roots, moving to South Korea in his late 20s to teach English — and then brazenly crossing the border to challenge one of the world’s most forbidding dictatorships.
He may pay a severe price.
Gomes was sentenced Tuesday to eight years of hard labor and fined the equivalent of $700,000 for entering North Korea illegally and for other unspecified hostile acts, the official North Korean news media said yesterday.
The US State Department expressed concern for his well-being and said he should be granted amnesty.
Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts called for Gomes’s freedom.
Related: Obama's Point Man on Pakistan
I hope he isn't a blind vet.
“This is a mother’s worst nightmare and a horrific situation,’’ Kerry said. “This young man belongs in Massachusetts with his family, and I join with them in expressing my hope that North Korea will do the right thing and send him home.’’
And here I am thinking of the torture, indefinite detentions, killed in war over lies, etc. Silly me.
Gomes’s family in Boston declined to discuss his case. A spokeswoman, Thaleia Schlesinger, said the family was disturbed by the sentence....
Little more is known about Gomes. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, with an English degree in 2001. Doug Boxer-Cook, Bowdoin spokesman, said Gomes was a resident adviser, or proctor, and took part in Masque and Gown, the college’s drama club. “Beyond that, I’m afraid we don’t have any information.’’
Then he really is CIA, huh?
Related: Get Your Yettaws Out
Yeah, ever since that incredible lie about Yettaw and the whole ChrIstiAn fundamentalist been I've been smelling a lot of
Yeah, that's it!
Academic specialists in the United States said that they expected the American government to begin low-profile negotiations to secure his release, but that he could face harsh treatment before eventually coming home.
And I am supposed to feel what..... sympathy for this NOC of a nutball?????
That is why Kerry is so interested, isn't it?
They based that assessment on the recent case of another American and a friend of Gomes named Robert Park, from Tucson. Park, an evangelical Christian missionary, crossed into North Korea on Christmas Day with a letter calling for leader Kim Jong Il to resign. Park was immediately arrested.
Park’s case may have motivated Gomes, 30, to enter North Korea a month later, on Jan. 25. Rights campaigners in Seoul, the South Korean capital, were quoted in news accounts as saying Gomes had met Park last year at church-sponsored protests — and had been very upset by Park’s arrest. Park was released in late February after making what many experts believe was a forced confession.
But when we waterboard the alleged 9/11 plotters it's all good evidence!
Pffft!
This kind of JOURNALISM is really RANK, readers!
South Korean media said Parks was subjected to physical and sexual abuse during his 43 days in custody. Park is apparently at home with family members in California, recovering.
Well, he was a religious man.
Protestants doing a little pooh-pooh pounding, too, 'eh?
Gomes is the fourth American detained in North Korea for entering illegally in the past year.
John Park, a North Korea specialist at the US Institute for Peace in Washington and a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, drew a distinction between the cases of Gomes and Robert Park and that of two women journalists who were detained for five months last year and released in a high-profile mission by former president Bill Clinton.
John Park said the two women, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were very prominent not least because they had worked for former vice president Al Gore’s TV network, but also because they were not directly challenging the regime’s authority. Their release allowed the North Korean government to gain credibility among potential domestic critics, the professor said.
What domestic critics?
I was told they were a closed, rigid, authoritarian nightmare that hinged on the whim of a crazy man.
What do they mean "domestic opposition?"
In North Korea?
On the contrary, Gomes and Park have little leverage: With the recent crossings of evangelical campaigners, professor Park said, “the North’s concern is that if they don’t treat this harshly, this could create a wave of people wanting to highlight rights abuse on the international stage.’’
A wave of CIA?
Professor Sung-Yoon Lee, a North Korean expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said he viewed the huge fine for Gomes as a “signal that North Korea is willing to negotiate and get some money for releasing Mr. Gomes.’’
They ain't crazy, 'murkns; they is smart!
Youse is the CRAZIES!!!
“A lot of North Korea watchers may criticize this foolhardy, risky move by Park and Gomes because it raises thorny issues of having to pay ransom or make some kind of concession,’’ Lee said.
Never stopped CIA before.
“But people like Gomes and Park embody a powerful human presence — the willingness to take a great risk and sacrifice themselves. . . . I think this kind of daring move will come to be viewed as, if not heroic, then certainly courageous in the long run,’’ Lee added.
I'm smelling CIA all over this now!
Then they forgot about him.
And look what floated up the MSM sewer on a Sunday:
"N. Korea denies sinking warship
TOKYO — North Korea denied sinking a South Korean warship near their disputed sea border, saying yesterday that the South was “foolishly seeking to link the accident with the North at any cost.’’ It was North Korea’s first official denial of involvement in the March 26 disaster, which killed 38 South Korean sailors and left eight others missing. The denial came a day after South Korean investigators said an “external explosion’’ probably sank the Cheonan in the Yellow Sea (Washington Post)."
"Probably?"
Yeah, had to be from the North, right?
Couldn't have been anything that got away from those recently conducted U.S./South Korea war games, right?
They were looking to frame North Korea right from the start!
Also see: South Korean Sailors Lost at Sea
Back looking for them yet, or.... ?????
