In Israel, some Holocaust survivors face hard times

A number of aging survivors, poor, with no family, or none willing to help, are finding it hard to get by. A few lucky ones are cared for at a shelter in Haifa. 'We deserve more,' says one.

By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times

July 6, 2010

Reporting from Haifa, Israel

Tucked into the hillside of this ancient port city is a sight few Israelis ever imagined they'd see in the Jewish state.

It's a simple, small housing shelter, converted from an old office building and not unlike ones for the homeless, drug addicts or battered women.

This facility, however, has a different clientele: Holocaust survivors.

The dozen or so residents are among those who more than six decades ago survived concentration camps or spent years as refugees fleeing Nazi persecution during World War II.

In Israel, many built prosperous, productive lives. But in old age, they've ended up broke, alone, sick or homeless, facing a painful choice between buying medicine or paying rent. Most have no remaining family; others have relatives unable or unwilling to help.

It's a pleasant enough shelter, with sunny rooms, free medical care, hot meals and plenty of smiling volunteers. Funded by the Helping Hands to Friends charity, it's the first of its kind in Israel, and a new 80-bed wing, currently under construction, has a waiting list of 1,800.

Despite the gratitude of those living here, there's also a sense of bitterness and betrayal. Residents ask how a nation established in part on their suffering could turn its back on them now.

"We helped found the state of Israel and built it," said Miryam Kremin, 88, who escaped a Polish ghetto as a teenager, leaving behind parents whom she never saw again. "They should make our final years better."

Kremin did not apply for Holocaust reparations until recently because she and her husband, an engineer, didn't need the money. But after he died, Kremin said she depleted most of her savings on rent and prescriptions.

Her room at the shelter has a homey feel, with a pink-flowered bedspread and purple curtains. But she says this isn't how she envisioned retirement. "We've been through so much," she said. "We deserve more."

Retired house painter Joseph Kunstlich, 83, survived the Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps by mining coal, working assembly lines and doing whatever else the Nazis ordered him to do. Still haunted by nightmares upon arrival in the Holy Land, he volunteered to fight in the 1948 war for Israeli independence.

Unlike others at the shelter, Kunstlich never had a problem establishing his claim for Holocaust reparations. "You can't fake this," he said, holding out a forearm tattooed with a Nazi-issued ID number.

But medical bills absorb half his compensation of about $900 a month, and an attorney, he said, swindled much of the rest. "The attorney went to jail for 12 years, but I got nothing," he said.

Carol Spiegelman, 70, spent his early childhood in a Romanian-controlled work camp. He went broke two years ago and found himself sleeping in the Tel Aviv airport. Because he has no documentation to prove he lived in the camp with his parents, his reparations claims have been rejected.

It never mattered before because he supported himself as a refinery worker. Now divorced with no children, he lives in a room barely big enough for a twin bed, two small tables and a TV, sharing a bathroom down the hall.

"God has punished me too harshly, I think," he said.

Poverty among Holocaust victims in Israel is something of a dirty little secret. An estimated 70,000 survivors — one-third of those living in Israel — don't have enough money to make ends meet, victims support groups say. The survivors show up in soup kitchens or government welfare agencies.

Tsipora Yaffe, 74, who escaped the 1941 Odessa massacre that killed her father, collects recyclable bottles from trash bins and off the street. "It's humiliating," Yaffe said, who does not live at the shelter. "But I close my eyes and do it."

In a country where the Holocaust still shapes social and political debate, such stories stir anger. Advocates for survivors say that in the zeal to "never forget" those who died, the needs of survivors are being forgotten.

"As a member of Knesset and a citizen, I am ashamed of how the Jewish state has treated Holocaust survivors," lawmaker Moshe Gafni, chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, said after the government recently delayed implementation of expanded medical subsidies for survivors. "The treatment is disgraceful. [It] shames me and should shame all of us."

Shimon Sabag, a soft-spoken former food vendor who founded the shelter, said he was stunned to discover how many Holocaust victims live in poverty.

"I always thought these people had been taken care of," said the father of two, who started the Helping Hands charity — "Yadezer" in Hebrew — with a $1-million settlement he received after breaking his back in a work-related car accident.

He began with a soup kitchen in Haifa and immediately noticed how many people in line had tattooed numbers on their arms.

"It gave me shivers," he said. From there, his group began offering home food delivery and free medical and dental care to survivors.

In late 2008, he opened the 12-bed shelter, which quickly filled up. With a donation from the German chapter of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, construction began this year on the expansion next door. Work was suspended recently for lack of funds.

With about half of Holocaust survivors now older than 80 and dying at a rate of 35 per day, Sabag called the situation urgent. "We only have a short time to fix what we can," he said.

The problem, according to Sabag and others, is that many survivors fall through the cracks or receive insufficient aid from Holocaust compensation programs, which are largely funded by $60 billion in German reparations and administered by the Israeli government and New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Many survivors living in Israel receive monthly payments ranging from $300 to $1,000. But as survivors age and their health problems grow, the payments are no longer enough.

Holocaust survivors in Israel are twice as likely to suffer from chronic illnesses as other people their age and nearly half report trouble sleeping, according to a recent Israeli study. Sabag said 80% of those seeking beds at his facility need medication for Holocaust-related mental health disorders.

Some survivors receive no compensation at all, usually because they were unable to provide proof. In some cases, survivors have been required to provide witnesses or documentation that they lived in a concentration camp for at least six months, or in a ghetto for 18 months.

"They make people go through hell to get the money," said Orly Vilnai-Federbush, an Israeli filmmaker who has documented the plight of Holocaust survivors, including one woman who returned to Germany, where she found it was easier to obtain compensation.

After survivors protested outside parliament wearing yellow Stars of David, the government in 2008 launched a program to provide about $300 a month to those who could not qualify for other help. But bureaucracy and documentation remain daunting, critics say.

When Spiegelman applied for the new program, he was told that his parents' names were found on the work camp detainee list but that his and his sister's were not.

"They want proof I was there," he said. "Where else would I be? Where would I find a witness now?"

At 67, Shoshana Roza-Levy is the youngest resident at the shelter. Her claims were also rejected because her parents fled Poland in 1939 and she was born in current-day Kyrgyzstan, where the Nazis didn't reach. Her mother died of malaria as they lived as refugees and her father was drafted into the Russian army.

"They tell me I am not a Holocaust victim," she said. "They make a mockery out of me."

Like Spiegelman, she said the rejection never mattered while her husband was alive. But after his death, she had a stroke and her stepchildren took over the apartment where she lived. Five years ago, she lost a leg to diabetes and lived in public hospitals or synagogue-affiliated shelters.

"So here I am, for the lack of any other option," she said from her wheelchair. "My whole world is in this one room."

The hot plate is a far cry from the well-stocked kitchen where she once baked cakes. And there's no space to indulge her passion for painting, though the walls are covered with her work.

"To live with grace in a place like this, I should have been born 200 years ago," she said.

Israeli government officials say they are working to improve services, noting that they are distributing about $700 million this year to 87,000 survivors in the form of compensation and other benefits, including discounted healthcare. More than 35,000 people now receive monthly payments under the 2008 program, officials said.

"The state is certainly doing more for Holocaust survivors in recent years, although we would like to be able to do more," said Ofra Ross, general manager of the Holocaust Survivors Authority at the Ministry of Finance.

But advocates say the government response has been spotty, increasing during periods of public pressure, such as protests at parliament, but then waning.

Residents at the shelter say they have learned to rely on themselves, becoming a family of sorts, sharing holiday meals and watching out for one another. Spiegelman, despite a gruff manner, is often the one who takes Kremin's arm on walks or runs errands for the staff. When one resident died recently, he rallied everyone around another who was particularly distraught.

"It's wonderful to see how they support each other," Sabag said.

For visitors, such as schoolchildren and historians, the residents feel an obligation to recite Holocaust experiences. But when the shelter doors close at night and it's just them, there's an unspoken understanding.

"We don't need to talk about that," Spiegelman said.

A favorite gathering spot is a small courtyard in front, with a couple of benches under the shade of a giant ficus tree. Sabag installed a copper sculpture of the numeral 6 as a memorial to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

This is where Spiegelman chain-smokes, Kunstlich watches the schoolchildren across the street, and Kremin lights a candle each day next to a makeshift gravestone she put here to remember the parents she had to leave behind.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-holocaust-poor-20100706,0,2505468,print.story

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Turning anger on immigration law into votes

Activists in Arizona hope increasing voter turnout among Latinos will reshape the state's policies; it's a campaign that worked in California in the 1990s.

By Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

July 6, 2010

Reporting from Phoenix

Rafael Robles has been eligible to vote ever since he became a U.S. citizen 23 years ago, but nothing has spurred him to register until two young activists visited his house here last week.

The canvassers were part of an ambitious push to increase turnout of Latino voters in the wake of a controversial state law that requires police to determine the immigration status of people they legally stop and suspect are in the country illegally.

Robles, 60, recounted how his 39-year-old daughter, a Phoenix native, has been stopped multiple times by officers who ask her in broken Spanish where she was born.

"It's only because she is Hispanic," Robles said as he filled out a form to become a voter. He noted how, in decades past, signs were posted at establishments across the Southwest saying no dogs or Mexicans were allowed.

"It can all return," he said.

Activists hope that SB 1070, which Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law in April and is scheduled to take effect July 29, will generate enough angry new Latino voters like Robles to reshape this state's hard-line approach to immigration.

As they fan out across sun-bleached barrios this summer, the activists cite the example of California.

More than 1 million California Latinos became citizens after the passage of anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994, putting the state solidly in the hands of Democrats and pushing immigration crackdowns to the margins.

Many analysts and political scientists predict a similar outcome — eventually — in Arizona. Latinos, 30% of the population, are the fastest-growing and youngest demographic group in the state.

"It's the same energy I saw with 187," said Ben Monterroso, a Service Employees International Union official who spearheaded voter registration in California in 1994 and now oversees the Arizona operation. "People are saying enough is enough."

But Arizona may be much more difficult to change, partly because Latinos are a smaller piece of the electorate in the state than in California, said Harry Pachon of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC.

And Stan Barnes, a lobbyist and former Republican legislator in the Arizona Senate, said the state's crackdown on illegal immigrants would bring out other new voters — ones who support sealing the border.

"The average guy in Arizona believes that Mexico has become a narco state and that is coming to Arizona," Barnes said. "The fact that the Arizona government has rallied to confront that has energized a whole new electorate."

It's obvious which way the political wind is blowing in the state that has become the favorite illegal entry point from Mexico. Few candidates for statewide office here, even Democrats who opposed SB 1070, are openly sympathetic to illegal immigrants.

New hard-line measures pop up seemingly every day. Last week, a Republican candidate for the state Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, proposed shutting off power to homes of illegal immigrants.

Polls show that SB 1070 is popular in Arizona, except among Latinos; in the most lopsided survey, as much as 81% opposed it. The get-out-the-vote campaign, launched in June by a coalition of labor, community and religious groups, is trying to channel that outrage in November.

The canvassers target Latinos who are already registered but rarely vote. Latino voter turnout hovers about 35%, and about 60% of all Arizona voters went to the polls in the last off-year election. Sixteen percent of registered voters in the state are Latino.

Francisco Heredia, the state director of Mi Familia Vota, the nonprofit spearheading the campaign, said the decision to focus on turnout was forced partly by Arizona law requiring people to prove their citizenship status before registering to vote. That makes it cumbersome for canvassers to sign up people who don't have documents handy or are wary about sharing them with strangers.

At 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, about two dozen canvassers filled a conference room in SEIU headquarters in Phoenix, chatting with a smaller group in Tucson via video. The walls were lined with papers listing how many voters other groups in the campaign had reached.

The campaign is trying to vastly increase the number of Latinos who sign up to receive mail-in ballots, which will make it easier for them to vote. The field coordinator, Martin Manteca, totaled the numbers and announced that they were at 2,300.

In pairs, the canvassers, all younger than 30, filed out and were driven to precincts around town. Yvette Saenz, 17, and Israel Araujo, 23, walked a blue-collar stretch of south Phoenix known as Sunland.

It was an appropriate name on this day, as the mercury climbed to 110 degrees. Before approaching doors, they rattled fences to make sure they weren't surprised by guard dogs.

"Anyone eligible to vote here?" Araujo asked a white-haired man who answered the door at one of the first houses.

"No, I'm from Mexico. I don't got no papers," the man said in English.

"Don't tell Arpaio," he quipped, referring to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, notorious in the community for arresting suspected illegal immigrants.

For every successful contact, there were dozens of unanswered knocks, or voices behind opaque screen doors telling the canvassers to leave.

After Araujo registered Rafael Robles to vote, there was a distinct spring in the canvasser's step.

"That keeps me going," said Araujo, who recently graduated from community college and plans to keep canvassing until he enrolls at Arizona State University to pursue an electrical engineering degree.

By the time Araujo and Saenz were done almost six hours later, they had persuaded 20 voters to sign up for mail-in ballots and had registered nine new voters.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arizona-voters-20100706,0,7836880,print.story

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Q&A: Understanding Arizona's immigration law

Civil rights groups have filed suit against the law, contending that it would promote racial profiling. Unless a judge intervenes, SB 1070 takes effect this month.

By Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

July 6, 2010

Reporting from Phoenix

Unless it is halted by a judge, Arizona's new immigration law is set to take effect July 29.

Civil rights groups have filed suit against the law, arguing that immigration is the purview of the federal government and that SB 1070 will promote racial profiling.

What does the law do?

The law essentially mandates that local governments in Arizona enforce immigration laws. The provision that has received the most attention is the creation of a new state crime: failure to possess proper immigration documents.

SB 1070 also forbids local entities, such as city councils or police departments, from making it a policy to ignore federal immigration laws. It allows people to sue if such a policy is formulated.

However, it may take months or years to learn the effects of the law because judges will probably rule on how it can be implemented.

What are police required to do under the law?

If officers stop, detain or arrest people while enforcing other laws or ordinances and reasonably suspect they are in the country illegally, they have to try to determine their status if it's practicable.

In other words, police don't have to determine someone's legal status if there's a shootout going on. They also get a pass if inquiring would hinder an investigation — by scaring off witnesses, for example.

If police find that the people they've stopped are illegal immigrants, do the police have to arrest them?

No. The law is silent on what police must do once they determine someone is in the country illegally.

What else must police do under the law?

Anyone arrested in Arizona cannot be released until police check with the federal government to determine whether that person is in the country legally.

Some read this to mean that it doesn't matter if suspects have birth certificates and passports — the federal government must confirm their status before they are freed. Others contend that the requirement only applies to suspected illegal immigrants.

Also, authorities must alert the federal government when any illegal immigrant convicted of a crime of any severity is released from custody or pays a fine to resolve a case.

Are police required to turn convicted illegal immigrants over to the federal government?

No, just to notify federal immigration agents.

How does this change things?

Currently, all law enforcement officers in the country, unless forbidden by management, are allowed to check on the immigration status of people they stop or arrest. This makes checking a requirement.

Police departments generally notify federal immigration officials when violent criminals who are illegal immigrants are being released from jail. SB 1070 makes it mandatory, and applies to low-grade offenders as well as violent felons.

Is this the same as federal law?

No. Although many of the crimes in SB 1070 are modeled on existing federal crimes, federal law does not require local police officers to check immigration status. There's also no right under federal law for people to sue local agencies that have policies against enforcing immigration laws.

Does SB 1070 require people who are legally in Arizona to carry "papers"?

No. The law specifies that certain documents can be shown to police to demonstrate someone is in the country legally — an Arizona driver's license or state ID card, tribal membership card or any other U.S. government ID that is only issued to legal residents. (Several states, including New Mexico, give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, so those licenses wouldn't suffice.) There's no requirement that people carry these documents, however.

The question of papers arises from the most prominent of the new crimes in SB 1070, called willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document. It's a misdemeanor modeled on a rarely enforced 1940 federal statute. But SB 1070 says that anyone in the country legally cannot be convicted of this crime.

Paradoxically, therefore, legal residents are not required to carry their documents.

From a practical perspective, however, some people may wish to carry proof of legal residency or citizenship if they believe they will be questioned by authorities about their status. And the federal statute that SB 1070 borrows from does require legal immigrants to carry their paperwork.

Is racial profiling allowed under this law?

The law bars consideration of race "except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution." Courts have allowed police to consider race if, for example, they have a report of a suspect of a certain race fleeing from a crime.

Border Patrol agents have been given slightly more leeway in specific immigration investigations to consider race; it's unclear whether courts would extend those abilities to Arizona police.

Critics contend that there's no way to enforce the law without racial profiling. The law's authors disagree.

What are the other new crimes under this law?

The law makes it a misdemeanor for illegal immigrants to work in Arizona and also outlaws the solicitation of work or any hiring that impedes traffic, a provision aimed at day laborers and those who employ them.

The law also makes it a misdemeanor to transport, harbor or shield an undocumented immigrant "in furtherance of their illegal presence," or encourage one to come to Arizona. But to be guilty of this misdemeanor, someone must be committing another criminal offense at the same time.

This last misdemeanor mirrors a federal law that is the subject of much judicial debate. Courts have ruled it is illegal to help an undocumented immigrant move through the United States but does not bar such acts as driving them to school or the hospital.

Some worry that courts could interpret the state law to mean that anyone transporting illegal immigrants anywhere could be guilty of this crime. The authors say it's clear SB 1070 applies only in the same situations as the federal law, such as helping an undocumented immigrant sneak into the country.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arizona-law-qa-20100706,0,3702293,print.story

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Authorities search for man who tried to kidnap L.A. County girl, 10

Authorities Monday released a sketch of a man who grabbed a 10-year-old girl and tried to kidnap her at a park in Pearblossom, southeast of Palmdale.

The girl was playing Saturday at Pearlblossom Park about 4 p.m. when she strayed from a group of friends and relatives, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.

The man grabbed the girl's arm and tried to take her to a secluded area of the park, but she broke free and ran to her cousin, authorities said.

The man is described as white, about 30 to 40 years old and 5 feet 9 to 6 feet tall with a medium build. He was wearing dark sunglasses, brown shorts and a T-shirt. He was seen driving a silver compact vehicle with a spoiler, authorities said.

Anyone with information is asked to call deputies at (800) 834-0064.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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From the New York Times

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Haitian Orphans Have Little but One Another

CROIX-DES-BOUQUETS, Haiti — More than five months after the earthquake that killed her single mother, Daphne Joseph, 14, lost her bearings a second time when she was forced to leave the makeshift orphanage where she had felt at home.

Immediately after the earthquake, she watched with horror as her mother's mangled body was carted away in a wheelbarrow from a shattered marketplace. Dropped at the doorstep of a community aid group, she contemplated suicide.

Yet within a couple of months, displaying a resilience that many in this shattered country exhibited, Daphne righted herself. She found an improvised family in a ragtag group of fellow earthquake orphans and the adults who nurtured them. Skipping cheerily to greet a visitor in March, she announced, “I'm so much better!”

In mid-June, however, Daphne was claimed by a relative who is not really a relative — the 23-year-old common-law wife of her half brother's father — and moved into a squalid tent city. It made her feel unmoored once again. Where did she belong? she wondered.

What made her questioning especially poignant was that the makeshift, open-air orphanage where she longs to return is an unsteady anchor. The community aid group that runs the place — which is little more than a pair of tents — is caring, but lacks expertise and resources. And neither the Haitian government nor international organizations here have helped it in a lasting way.

Like Daphne, the orphanage faces an uncertain future, with an eviction looming.

“We don't really know what to do next,” said the Rev. Gerald Bataille, the primary supervisor of the children. “Somehow, the whole world wants to help Haiti , but we feel like we're on our own.”

The lives of Daphne and 14 younger children hang in the balance, although conditions at the makeshift orphanage are far from ideal.

On a recent Sunday, the newest arrivals, 11-month-old twin girls named Magda and Magdaline Charles, lay limp and entwined on a urine-soaked rug under a mango tree. They were covered with flies.

“They arrived naked and dehydrated,” Pastor Bataille said. “Their mother said, ‘If you leave them with me, they're going to die.' So although we're not equipped for babies, we took them.”

Pastor Bataille's organization, known by the acronym Frades, is a grass-roots collective that specializes in microloans. Although it was not a child-care organization before the earthquake, it assumed responsibility for local children who were orphaned or abandoned afterward, about 26 of them at first.

With the help of the mayor's office, Frades board members found a place to keep the children: an idle construction site where a foundation had been laid for a nightclub that never materialized. Save the Children provided two large tents, but nothing to furnish them.

A Frades board member, through a personal connection, got a two-month supply of water and basic food from Ceci, a Canadian group. Readers of a January article in The New York Times about Daphne and the other children contributed about $1,000 in cash and Medika Mamba , a nutritionally fortified peanut butter, and they formed a support group.

But Frades needed more: mattresses, latrines, showers, medical care, money to pay cooks and counselors and a continuing water and food supply. And even with so many international aid groups in the country, sustained help was hard to find.

Frades board members said they had visited the United Nations logistics base and asked Unicef for beds. They were directed to a supply request form on the Internet, which they filled out. They never received a response, they said. (Contacted by The Times, a spokeswoman for Unicef suggested that they try again, and offered contact information.)

Next, they sought further aid from Save the Children. In February, they submitted an application for a project they called “For Children to Reclaim Life in Croix-des-Bouquets.” They supplied three versions of a budget, they said, met with Save the Children administrators and followed up with phone calls in which they were passed from one person to another.

Finally, this month, a Save the Children administrator sent an e-mail message, which began “I regret to inform you ...” The letter concluded, “According to our current standards and operational criteria, we can't unfortunately validate Frades's proposal, as it doesn't match with the objectives of our internal strategy nor with our areas of intervention.”

Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for Save the Children, said the note meant that her group did not serve the Croix-des-Bouquets area; World Vision does. Why nobody told Frades this sooner is unclear. But as a result, the children at Frades were not registered in the program that was supposed to evaluate each stranded child's situation, assign the child a government caseworker and either arrange interim care or link the caregiver to support.

Ms. Conradt said Save the Children would now ask World Vision to contact Frades, whose situation is increasingly dire.

The Miami-based landlord of the site is seeking to evict the group, having found a paying tenant — a Christian school — that does not want to share the space. The tents provided by Save the Children, swelteringly hot inside, are still unfurnished but for a few school desks. The children sleep on thin scraps of carpet laid over sandy concrete.

And their universe of caregivers has shrunk as the organization has run low on money. Mostly, the children, with their runny noses, distended bellies and homemade kites, take care of one another.

Thirteen-year-old Michaelle Point du Jour, who lost both parents in the earthquake, cooks for and feeds the younger children. She prepares rice and beans and, while many of the children appear healthier now than a couple of months ago, most if not all are malnourished and have chronic intestinal parasitic infections, said Dr. Patricia Back, a Cincinnati-based family doctor who visited them recently.

Michaelle is the oldest since Daphne left. Pastor Bataille said that Daphne's half brother's stepmother, Manouchca Deravine, came to take Daphne away when he was out. He said he could not go reclaim her because Frades had no right — even if Ms. Deravine had no legal claim to her, either. He has to tread lightly in the community, he said, where some displaced people are suspicious that Frades is using the children to get more assistance than everyone else.

Pastor Bataille said he did not know where Daphne had gone. But one of the other children and Chantal Dumas, a former school secretary who has been serving as a teacher at Frades, helped visitors track her down. It turns out that Daphne now lives in the tent city directly behind the wall of the Frades construction site. She shares a small camping tent with five others.

Daphne sat in her visitors' car, looking down at her lap at first, with ear buds from a banged-up MP3 player in her ears. “It's O.K.,” she said about her new living arrangement. When asked if she thought about her mother, she grew animated.

Right after the earthquake, Daphne had described her mother's spirit as a wind at her back, pushing her forward. Now, she said, she is plagued by dreams in which her mother tries to smother her with a white towel. Her mother's spirit haunts her. “She's a zombie,” Daphne said.

She was speaking a few days after she had left Frades, and she said Ms. Deravine was treating her fine. But soon, Daphne said, the woman would probably start mistreating her, as she had in the past. Ms. Dumas, her confidante, said that Daphne feared she would be used as a restavek — a child servant.

“I lived at Frades since January, and nobody ever talked to me badly there,” she said plaintively, her head leaning on Ms. Dumas's shoulder.

In a brief interview, Ms. Deravine complained that Frades had not sent Daphne to school. She is not, either.

When Daphne's visitors were leaving, she clung to the side of their car. “You're not going to leave me here, are you?” she whispered anxiously. “Please, take me with you. Please.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/world/americas/06haiti.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=world&adxnnlx=1278417600-ngYCCsC0HXlx6JoH0VNJVg&pagewanted=print

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Utah's Gun Permit Popular With Nonresidents

James Roe, a 64-year-old computer consultant from rural Pennsylvania, spent a recent Saturday in a Pittsburgh suburb learning about riflings, hangfires and powder charges. The gun safety class was for people seeking a concealed-firearm permit in Utah, some 1,500 miles away. Never mind that Mr. Roe has not been to Utah in 20 years and has no plans to visit anytime soon.

Like thousands of other gun owners who will most likely never set foot in Utah, Mr. Roe wants a permit there for one reason: It allows him to carry his semiautomatic .45-caliber pistol in 32 other states that recognize or have formal reciprocity with Utah's gun regulations.

“I think that all states should be as broad based with reciprocity and as careful as the state of Utah is,” said Mr. Roe, who wants the option of taking his handgun with him when he visits his son in Ohio, both for protection and for target practice. (Ohio does not honor Pennsylvania's firearm permit.)

With the Supreme Court ruling last week that the Second Amendment's guarantee of an individual's right to bear arms applies to state and local laws, Utah is a popular player in Americans' efforts to legally obtain firearms. The state is issuing what has become the permit of choice for many gun owners.

Fifteen years after the Utah Legislature loosened rules on concealed firearm permits by waiving residency and other requirements, the state is increasingly attracting firearm owners from throughout the country. Nearly half of the 241,811 permits granted by the state are now held by nonresidents, according to the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification, which administers the permits.

In 2004, Utah received about 8,000 applications for the permits. Last year, 73,925 applications were submitted — with nearly 60 percent coming from nonresidents.

Laws for carrying concealed firearms vary widely by state, as do issuing standards for permits. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut do not honor other states' permits. Some states, like Florida, allow nonresidents to qualify for permits. Utah stands out because its permit is relatively inexpensive and is broadly accepted, and the requisite safety class can be taken anywhere.

By passing the class and the background check, and paying a $65.25 fee, the applicant receives what many consider to be the most prized gun permit in the country. Permits are good for five years and cost $10 to renew.

Some Second Amendment proponents argue that people with permits are more likely to be law abiding because they have undergone at least some form of background check.

“The spirit of self-defense should not stop at a state's border,” said Clark Aposhian, a Utah gun lobbyist who sits on the state's Concealed Firearm Review Board , which helps regulate the permitting process. “Not once has there been a pattern of problems with Utah permit holders in other states.”

But Utah's permit program has its critics. Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence , asserted that Utah's policy was dangerous because many states were lax in submitting felony and mental health records to the federal database used for background checks.

“I think it's absolutely shameful and ludicrously irresponsible to say that anybody anywhere who wants one of our concealed-carry permits, and thus will be able to carry legally in dozens of states, can just log on to our Web site and pay 60 bucks and that's all she wrote,” Mr. Hamm said.

As more people have turned to Utah for permits, the demand for instructors who teach Utah's gun safety class in other states has increased. Of the 1,097 instructors certified by Utah, 706 are in other states. Advertisements for classes held throughout the country appear widely on the Internet.

Another source of contention is that the class does not require any actual shooting. One could conceivably obtain a Utah permit without ever having fired a gun. Nevada and New Mexico recently stopped honoring Utah permits because the class does not meet its live-fire requirements.

“Residents of other states should be aware that people who have a Utah concealed-weapon permit may not have actually fired a weapon,” said Dee Rowland, chairwoman of the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah . “I think that would be quite shocking to members of the public.”

Supporters of Utah's policy counter that the state's 50-page curriculum on gun safety, and background checks that are updated every 24 hours, ensure that the system is safe.

“We teach passive defense in Utah,” said State Representative Curtis Oda , a Republican from Clearfield.

“We have no idea what could have happened had there been an armed defender at Columbine and Virginia Tech ,” Mr. Oda said, “but we know with absolute certainty what happens when there's not.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/us/06guns.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Tirade Offers Insight on Would-Be Bomber

When Faisal Shahzad , the suspect in the failed Times Square bombing, pleaded guilty last month, the judge asked whether he knew what he had been doing was a crime.

“I would not consider it a crime,” Mr. Shahzad replied.

Was he aware he had violated United States law? the judge asked.

Mr. Shahzad said he was aware, but added, “I don't care for the laws of United States.”

It was a revelatory moment in a court case that abruptly ended on June 21, when Mr. Shahzad expounded for more than half an hour on how and why he had tried to detonate a bomb in Times Square on a crowded Saturday evening.

Lawyers, prosecutors and others who have heard such statements, when the defendants are given an opportunity to explain their actions and motivations at length, say they can offer valuable insight into terrorists' minds, particularly in a case as baffling as Mr. Shahzad's.

The would-be bomber had cooperated for more than two weeks without counsel and “provided useful information,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has said. But then Mr. Shahzad turned around and endorsed attacks on the United States, declaring he was a “Muslim soldier” who believed that killing children was justified in the war against America.

“I don't recall that I've really ever seen or known of someone who was actually an activist operative, a committed jihadist, who in this length of time became converted, showed remorse,” said Mary Jo White , a former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York who oversaw terrorism prosecutions from 1993 to 2002 that led to some 30 convictions.

Ms. White said Mr. Shahzad's statements recalled a 1998 fatwa by Osama bin Laden directing Muslims to kill Americans, civilian or military, anywhere in the world.

“His allocution really embodies that credo,” she said, “and he's telling the world that just because he's pleading guilty under the U.S. criminal justice system, which he doesn't credit, that does not mean for an instant that he has any remorse for what he did.”

Some of those interviewed suggested that Mr. Shahzad's statements, delivered in response to questions from a judge, were an attempt to rehabilitate his image among jihadists, given his botched bombing attempt on May 1 and the perception that he gave information to investigators that led to arrests overseas.

“He's not your conventional criminal who's trying to receive leniency,” said Thane Rosenbaum , who teaches law at Fordham University and is the author of “The Myth of Moral Justice.”

“His crime is entirely based on some symbolic gesture of hatred and retaliation,” he added. “For him, the only way to validate the symbolism is to publicly proclaim what he wanted to do.”

Joshua L. Dratel, a lawyer who has represented accused terrorists in federal court and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said, “It's not unusual for defendants to have buyer's remorse between spilling their guts and resolving their case.”

“The evolution of a defendant's attitude is not scripted like a television show,” Mr. Dratel added. “Everything doesn't have to fit at the end of the story.”

Another terrorist who pleaded guilty and used the courtroom as a platform for his views was Zacarias Moussaoui , the so-called 20th hijacker on Sept. 11. At his sentencing in 2006 in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., he praised Mr. bin Laden and claimed to be “a mujahid” — the same word Mr. Shahzad used last month in describing himself. And in an earlier hearing, Mr. Moussaoui, who ultimately received a life sentence, testified about his delight at hearing of the grief of victims' families, and said he would kill Americans again — “anytime, anywhere.”

“You realized the depth of the fanaticism and hatred,” Robert A. Spencer, a former federal prosecutor who cross-examined Mr. Moussaoui, recalled. “It wasn't that he was trying to distance himself from it and save his life. He was proud of it. He was embracing it. It underscored what we're up against.”

In the debate over where to try terrorists, critics have said the traditional civilian courts offer terrorists a public platform to spew their hatred. But statements have been made in the military system as well, albeit somewhat less publicly.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said in a statement to a closed military panel at Guantánamo in 2007 that he was “responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” and offered a rambling confession of his role in a series of other terrorist plots, according to a transcript released later. And in an outburst during an open hearing the next year, another 9/11 detainee, Ramzi bin al-Shibh , called on Mr. bin Laden to “attack the American enemy with all his power.”

Not everyone convicted in a terrorism case takes such a militant stand.

Last month, Syed Hashmi , a former Brooklyn College student, received a 15-year sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Al Qaeda . He had admitted that while studying in England, he knew a man staying with him was planning to deliver outdoor clothing and other gear to Al Qaeda for use in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors said Mr. Hashmi believed “in Al Qaeda's terrorist mission” and willingly played a role within the group's “secretive support network.”

Mr. Hashmi criticized United States government policies and what he called the “cruel” conditions under which he was held pending trial. But he told the judge he had made “a mistake” helping the operative.

“Clearly, I was wrong,” Mr. Hashmi said, “because as a citizen of the United States, I was not Islamically allowed to give that material support to those who waged war against America.”

Although defendants are often given time and leeway to make their statements, which are usually offered at sentencing but may occur during pleas or in other appearances, judges have been known to respond.

When Ramzi Ahmed Yousef , who led the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, called himself an Islamic militant at his sentencing, the judge, Kevin Thomas Duffy, picked up a copy of the Koran from the bench and read several passages aloud, suggesting Mr. Yousef's acts had violated Islamic teachings.

“Your god is not Allah,” the judge said. “You worship death and destruction.”

On June 21, Mr. Shahzad told Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum that he wanted to read aloud from a piece of paper. But the judge told him not to read it. “I want to know what happened,” she said. “Tell me what you did.”

The judge made clear she wanted to be sure Mr. Shahzad was competent to plead guilty and understood the charges and the rights he was giving up. He will most likely have another opportunity to address her, and the world, at his sentencing in October.

But after that, like so many convicted terrorists before him, he will probably go silent.

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema , who sentenced Mr. Moussaoui, told him: “You came here to be a martyr and to die in a great big bang of glory, but to paraphrase the poet T. S. Eliot , instead, you will die with a whimper. The rest of your life you will spend in prison.”

Mr. Moussaoui began to respond, but Judge Brinkema continued. “You will never again get a chance to speak,” she said, “and that is an appropriate and fair ending.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/nyregion/06shahzad.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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