This guy abandoned his family and left them to (poorly) manage the mortgage and other bills. He then refused to be found by them when they ran out of money and only then started looking for him.
The meme in DC news is that only some kind of dementia or other mental impairment would cause such behavior in a civil rights hero.
I think he realized how old he was getting and just decided that there was no time like now to take a break from his life and see the world.
If they guy couldn’t cover a $50K check, he didn’t have a lot of cash to begin with. That begs the question as to how he supported himself abroad for all of these years. As a professional “activist,” I’m guessing he wasn’t collecting a pension (beyond social security). Dubai isn’t exactly a low-cost neighborhood, so who was picking up the tab for this “civil rights icon” for all those years and likewise, who payed for his plane ticket home?
Based on his remarks to the media, this guy doesn’t seem to be suffering from advanced dementia or any other sort of mental impairment. He just wrote a rubber check and decided to skip the country before the cops caught up with him. Now that his benefactors have cut off freebies, he comes slinking home and the feds finally got their man.
The irony? The taxpayers will now pick up the tab for this deadbeat, including the cost of his incarceration; “free” attorney to represent him in court, the tab associated with his prison term (to include medical expenses) and of course, more legal fees for the inevitable “appeal.”
We could have saved ourselves a lot of time and money by telling the UAE he was persona non grata and would be denied entry into the country. Let him find a way to support himself in Dubai and make arrangements to dun his social security and other income to make good on that bad check from 2009.