exile

Families of many of the Palestinian prisoners being released by Israel under an exchange deal say their long-awaited freedom is bittersweet after they learned their loved ones would be deported to third countries.

At least 154 Palestinian prisoners being freed on Monday as part of the swap for Israeli captives held in Gaza will be forced into exile by Israel, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office said.

Those to be deported are among a larger group of Palestinians being released by Israel – 250 people held in Israeli prisons along with about 1,700 Palestinians seized from the Gaza Strip during two years of Israel’s war, many of whom were “forcibly disappeared”, according to the United Nations. For its part, Hamas and other Palestinian groups released 20 Israeli captives under a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

There are no details yet about where the freed Palestinians will be sent, but in a previous prisoner release in January, dozens of detainees were deported to countries in the region, including Tunisia, Algeria and Turkiye.

Observers said the forced exile illegally breaches the citizenship rights of the released prisoners and is a demonstration of the double standards surrounding the exchange deals.

“It goes without saying it’s illegal,” Tamer Qarmout, associate professor in public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera.

“It is illegal because these are citizens of Palestine. They have no other citizenships. They’re out of a small prison, but they’re sent to a bigger prison, away from their society, to new countries in which they will face major restrictions. It’s inhumane.”

Families shocked by deportations

Speaking to Al Jazeera in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, relatives of Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Imran said they were shocked to learn he was among those Israel had decided to force into exile.

Raed Imran said the family had previously received a call from an Israeli intelligence officer, confirming that his brother, 43, would be released home and asking where he would stay on his release.

But on Monday, the family was dismayed to learn that Muhammad, who was arrested in December 2022 and sentenced to 13 life terms, would be deported.

“Today’s news was a shock, but we are still waiting. Maybe we’ll get to see him somehow,” Imran said. “What matters is that he is released, here or abroad.”

The exile means his family might be unable to travel overseas to meet him due to Israel’s control of the borders.

“We might be looking at families who will be seeing their loved ones deported and exiled out of Palestine but have no way of seeing them,” said Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, who has reported extensively from the occupied West Bank.

‘A win-win for Israel’

According to Qarmout, the deportations are intended to deprive Hamas and other Palestinian groups of being able to claim any symbolic win from the exchange and to remove the deported prisoners from any involvement in political or other activities.

“Exile means the end of their political future,” he said. “In the countries they go to, they will face extreme constraints, so they will not be able to be active in any front related to the conflict.”

He said the deportations amounted to forcible displacement of the released prisoners and collective punishment for their families, who would either be separated from their exiled loved ones or forced to leave their homeland if they were permitted by Israel to travel to join them.

“It’s a win-win for Israel,” he said, contrasting their experiences to those of the released Israeli captives, who will be able to resume their lives in Israel.

“It’s more double standards and hypocrisy,” he said.

Additional reporting by Mosab Shawer in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank

Two years after a sign-stealing scandal at the University of Michigan rocked college football, the NCAA on Friday increased sanctions the Wolverines had self-imposed but refrained from handing down the most severe punishments.

Michigan won’t be subject to a postseason ban and won’t be required to vacate victories — especially important because the Wolverines won the national championship in 2023, the last of three seasons they were accused of improperly stealing signals that opposing coaches used to communicate with players on the field.

However, they were fined approximately $30 million and the program was placed on four years of probation. Also, the suspension of head coach Sherrone Moore was increased from the self-imposed two games to three. In addition to the third and fourth games of the 2025 season, Moore also will miss the 2026 opener.

Jim Harbaugh, the Michigan head coach from 2015 to 2023 who now is coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, will have a 10-year show-cause penalty tacked onto the current four-year show cause that resulted from scouting and recruiting violations in 2021-2022.

Connor Stalions, the staff member who carried out the sign-stealing scheme, was handed an eight-year show-cause penalty and former assistant Denard Robinson was hit with a three-year show-cause sanction for recruiting violations and failing to attend an NCAA hearing on the matter.

As long as Harbaugh remains in the NFL, the penalty will have no real impact on him. However, the sanction could make him unwelcome in the college ranks for more than a decade.

The show-cause sanction effectively makes it difficult for the person to secure employment at an NCAA school because it requires a school attempting to make the hire to “show cause” to the NCAA why it shouldn’t also be penalized for giving the person a job.

The NCAA had charged Michigan with 11 rule violations, six of them the most serious Level 1 variety, after an investigation revealed that Stalions had carried out a scheme to shoot video of the signals opposing coaches used to communicate with players on the field.

Stalions, a retired captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was paid $55,000 a year as an off-field defensive analyst at Michigan. He is alleged to have arranged for people to attend the games of upcoming Michigan opponents and film the sideline signals from 2021 to 2023, when the scheme was uncovered and Stalions resigned.

The NCAA does not prohibit stealing signs during games, but since 1994 schools are not allowed to scout upcoming opponents in person. The rule was designed to prevent well-funded programs from gaining an advantage by sending scouts to opponents’ games when programs with smaller budgets couldn’t afford such scouting.

According to the NCAA notice of allegations, Stalions was accused of arranging the scouting of at least 13 future opponents on 58 occasions. He purchased tickets at nearly every Big Ten school.

The fine imposed by the NCAA Committee on Infractions includes a $50,000 initial fine, 10% of the football budget, 10% of the cost of football scholarships for the 2025 season and the loss of all postseason-competition revenue sharing for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Added up, it should exceed $30 million.

Moore improperly deleted a thread of 52 text messages with Stalions when the scandal became public. However, the NCAA was able to retrieve the texts, but Moore was not charged with having knowledge of the sign-stealing.

Harbaugh was suspended for the last three games of the 2023 regular season despite his adamant denial that he knew anything about the sign-stealing. Michigan won all three games anyway and went on to capture the national championship.

While preparing the Chargers for his first season at the helm in August 2024, Harbaugh reiterated that he was “not aware nor complicit” in the sign-stealing at Michigan. He felt compelled to address the situation because Moore — his replacement as head coach — was one of seven staffers from the 2023 championship Michigan team under investigation.

“Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal,” Harbaugh said in a statement in 2024. “I was raised with that lesson. I have raised my family on that lesson. I have preached that lesson to the teams that I’ve coached. No one’s perfect. If you stumble, you apologize and you make it right.

“Today, I do not apologize. I did not participate, was not aware nor complicit in those said allegations. So for me, it’s back to work and attacking with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.”

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti became an unlikely Michigan advocate in pushing the NCAA to keep sanctions to a minimum, suggesting to the NCAA Committee on Infractions that Michigan deserved no further punishment.

This was the same Petitti who suspended Harbaugh in a Nov. 10, 2023, letter to Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel that appeared to question the integrity of the Wolverines’ program.

The school sought an emergency temporary restraining order against the Big Ten to allow Harbaugh continue coaching, saying due process had not been followed and asserting that Harbaugh had no knowledge of Stalions’ sign-stealing.

Michigan eventually withdrew the restraining order request, but the relationship between the school and the commissioner remained contentious as Harbaugh served the suspension and the Wolverines turned the episode into a rallying cry.

This season, Michigan will visit USC on Oct. 11 but does not play UCLA.

MIAMI — For decades, its powerful lighthouse illuminated Miami’s Biscayne Bay, and during the height of the Cold War, what was known as the Freedom Tower stood as a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing communist rule.

The 14-story Spanish Revival skyscraper was where, from 1962 to 1974, the U.S. State Department welcomed Cuban refugees with medical services, English classes, and comfort kits containing essentials and something wholly exotic to the new arrivals: peanut butter.

After decades of neglect, what was once Miami’s tallest building is getting a well-deserved facelift. Next month, it will reopen as a museum honoring the history of Cuban exiles with immersive, state-of-the-art exhibits that explore the meaning of migration, freedom and homeland.

Ellis Island of the South

The reopening of what’s dubbed the Ellis Island of the South comes at a sensitive moment. Cuban Americans — who dominate politics in Miami — voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the last presidential election. But the president’s crackdown on migrants — including Cubans — is increasingly viewed as a betrayal and has left many second-guessing that support. Not surprisingly, recent protests against Trump have gathered outside the tower.

The organizers of the museum, while tiptoeing around the present-day politics, are nonetheless unapologetic in their embrace of the American dream. In Miami, a thriving crossroads where 70% of residents speak Spanish as their first language and more than half are foreign-born, compassion for migrants runs deep.

“It’s cyclical,” said Rene Ramos, who as head archivist of Miami Dade College participated in the $65 million renovation led by the school. “This country has had moments where it clearly saw the value of immigrants and other moments when it did not. What we’re doing here is reminding people what immigrants can accomplish when they’re given the opportunity.”

The iconic building opened in 1925 as the headquarters of the once-acclaimed Miami Daily News, which shuttered decades ago. It was designed in the style of a Moorish bell tower from Seville, Spain, by the New York architectural firm Schultze & Weaver, which was behind some of the most glamorous hotels, theaters and office towers of the era.

It was renamed the Freedom Tower when President John F. Kennedy launched the Cuban Refugee Assistance Program to resettle the streams of middle-class individuals and families fleeing Fidel Castro’s revolution. It’s estimated that nearly 400,000 Cubans relied on services provided at the tower by the U.S. government in coordination with the then-fledgling Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. The total cost of the refugee assistance ran over $730 million by 1971 — almost $6 billion in today’s dollars — a U.S. government report from that year found.

A safe place for refugees

Known to the Spanish-speaking migrants as “El Refugio,” or “The Refuge,” it was a safe place to get vaccines, fill out paperwork and receive financial assistance of around $120 per month. In the Grand Hall, with its giant windows and Corinthian columns, the Pizarra de la Suerte — the Bulletin Board of Good Luck — carried job notices to help the Cubans adjust to their new life, according to a replica of the hall in the museum.

At the time, metropolitan Miami was a tropical tourist town, with fewer than 1 million inhabitants. Most émigrés fanned out across the United States.

“They weren’t staying in Miami because they didn’t want warmth and sunshine. There were no jobs,” said Madeline Pumariega, the president of Miami Dade College, whose own Cuban parents relocated to Amarillo, Texas, after arriving here.

But over time, the exiles would trudge back from the cold and snow to put their unmistakable Cuban stamp on what would become one of America’s most vibrant cultural and economic hubs.

Jorge Malagón, who teaches history at Miami Dade College, was just 5 when he arrived. But he still wells up recalling the hardship of his departure — when Cuban customs officials ripped open his teddy bear looking for contraband jewelry — and arriving in Miami on a “Freedom Flight” paid for by the U.S. government and being immediately shuttled in a school bus from the tarmac to the Freedom Tower.

“The memories never go away,” said Malagón, who recalls being welcomed with a bar of unfamiliar peanut butter and a block of government cheese. “To this day, a grilled cheese sandwich with cheap, Velveeta processed cheese is still comfort food to me.”

The Freedom Tower, a national historic landmark, was long ago overtaken by Miami’s fast-growing steel and glass skyline. Abandoned for years, it was rescued in 1997 by Cuban American businessman Jorge Mas Canosa, a top exile opponent of Castro. He later sold it to a prominent Cuban American family and it was then donated to Miami Dade College.

Even in a dilapidated state, the tower remained a mecca of the Cuban diaspora. In 2003, tens of thousands of salsa fans gathered here to show their respects to Cuban-born singer Celia Cruz. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents migrated from Cuba, used it as the backdrop to announce his bid for the U.S. presidency in 2015.

The current restoration was funded by $25 million investment from the state of Florida, with additional funding from Miami Dade College, private donors and federal government grants.

Galleries designed by the same firm behind New York City’s National September 11 Memorial & Museum provide a gripping account of the Cuban American journey to freedom. They include exhibits dedicated to Victims of Communism, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion that the CIA organized against Castro, and the 14,000 unaccompanied minors sent by their parents as part of the U.S.-led Operation Peter Pan.

Giant media screens project scenes of protest and acts of courage by newer residents of the Magic City fleeing persecution in Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua. There’s also a makeshift recording studio for those who passed through the Freedom Tower to add their testimony to an archive of over 300 oral history interviews with exiles, including prominent voices like singer Gloria Estefan.

Emerging from the dark galleries of often traumatic stories of dislocation and exile, the museum’s final stop is a gallery flooded with all the sun, salsa music and pastel hues that make modern-day Miami so beloved.

“Miami and the world would not be what it is today without them,” said Pumariega. “That’s important and so is the contributions that immigrants play in our country, and I think will continue to play beyond this moment.”

Goodman writes for the Associated Press.

A retired Nicaraguan military officer who later became a critic of President Daniel Ortega has been killed in a shooting at his condominium in Costa Rica, where he lives in exile.

The death of Roberto Samcam, 67, on Thursday has heightened concern about the safety of Nicaraguan dissidents, even when they live abroad.

Police in Costa Rica have confirmed that a suspect entered Samcam’s condominium building in the capital of San Jose at approximately 7:30am local time (13:30 GMT) and shot the retired major at least eight times.

Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Organisation identified the murder weapon as a 9mm pistol. Samcam’s wife, Claudia Vargas, told the Reuters news agency that the suspect pretended to be a delivery driver to gain access to her husband.

The suspect allegedly fired on Samcam and then left without saying a word, escaping on a motorcycle. He remains at large.

Samcam went into exile after participating in the 2018 protests, which began as demonstrations against social security reforms and escalated into one of the largest antigovernment movements in Nicaragua’s history.

Thousands of people flooded Nicaragua’s streets. Some even called for President Ortega’s resignation.

But while Ortega did ultimately cancel the social security reforms, he also answered the protests with a police crackdown, and the clashes killed an estimated 355 people, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

More than 2,000 people were injured, and another 2,000 held in what the IACHR described as “arbitrary detention”.

In the months and years after the protests, Ortega has continued to seek punishment for the protesters and institutions involved in the demonstrations, which he likened to a “coup”.

Samcam was among the critics denouncing Ortega’s use of military weapons and paramilitary forces to tamp down on the protests. Ortega has denied using either for repression.

In a 2019 interview with the publication Confidencial, for instance, he compared Ortega to Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last member of what is commonly known as the Somoza family dictatorship, which ruled Nicaragua for nearly 43 years.

And in 2022, Samcam published a book that roughly called Ortega: El Calvario de Nicaragua, which roughly translates to: Ortega: Nicaragua’s torment.

Ortega has long been accused of human rights abuses and authoritarian tendencies. In 2023, for instance, he stripped hundreds of dissidents of their citizenship, leaving them effectively stateless, and seized their property.

He has also pushed for constitutional reforms to increase his power and that of his wife, former Vice President Rosario Murillo. She now leads with Ortega as his co-president.

The changes also increase Ortega’s term in office and grant him the power to coordinate all “legislative, judicial, electoral, control and supervisory bodies” — putting virtually all government agencies under his authority.

From abroad, Samcam was helping to lead an effort to document some of Ortega’s alleged abuses.

In 2020, he became the chain-of-command expert for the Court of Conscience, a group created by the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, a nonprofit founded by a Nobel Prize-winning Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias.

As part of the group, Samcam solicited testimony of torture and abuses committed under Ortega, with the aim of building a legal case against the Nicaraguan president and his officials.

“We are documenting each case so that it can move on to a trial, possibly before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights,” Samcam said at the time.

Samcam is not the only Nicaraguan dissident to face an apparent assassination attempt while in exile.

Joao Maldonado, a student leader in the 2018 protests, has survived two such attempts while living in the Costa Rican capital. The most recent one, in January 2024, left him and his partner seriously injured.

Maldonado has blame Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front — which Ortega leads — for the attack.