An injustice abroad
By RUBEN ROSARIO

Pioneer Press, MN
June 3 2005

Attending church has lost its appeal for a Shoreview mother marking
the first year since her world-traveling son’s still-unsolved slaying
in Armenia. ‘I feel that God has turned his back on my son.’

Beaten and dying from three stab wounds to his chest, Joshua Haglund
mumbled something in English and raised three fingers to the landlady
who discovered him outside his apartment building in Yerevan, the
capital of Armenia.

Whether “three” meant his third-floor apartment or three assailants or
something else, no one knows. Even now, more than a year after the May
17, 2004, slaying, family members of the 33-year-old Shoreview native
and globe-trotting English teacher still don’t know who killed him,
or why.

And they have been frustrated and stymied at every step in finding out
even the most bare-bone facts, in spite of an exhaustive letter-writing
and lobbying campaign by friends and family to Armenian and American
government officials.

The list includes ambassadors and embassy officials, Minnesota’s two
senators, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum and even New York Sen. Hillary
Clinton. President Bush is next on the list.

“One of the Armenian officials told us to our face that it would be
an honor to solve our son’s murder,” Maxine Haglund-Blommer said of
her family’s trip last October to the former Soviet republic. “Then
I found out through other people there that it was just lip service.”

Seeking justice in America can be a tough go at times. But I will stack
our police against any other country’s when it comes to cracking a
case as well as responding to the needs of crime victims and survivors.

In Armenia, the Haglund slaying, whether by accident, neglect or
design, seems to have been treated like a cold case from the start
and put on ice awhile back.

“There has been no progress, and no apparent interest in
resolving the Haglund case,” John Hughes, writer and co-founder of
, an English language online weekly in Yerevan,
wrote Thursday in an e-mail.

Haglund’s mother has found that out the hard way the past year. The
emotional impact of her son’s death was bad enough. The impact of not
knowing what happened has shaken her faith and continues to fester
and irritate like a wound that won’t heal.

“This has been the worst year of our lives,” says Haglund-Blommer,
who has three other grown children – James, a teacher in Hawaii; John,
who runs the Top Dog hockey school; and Barb McKenzie, a Robbinsdale
school volunteer coordinator.

“I used to go to church several times a week,” Haglund-Blommer said
this week on the one-year anniversary of her son’s funeral. “But I
feel that God has turned his back on my son. Who do I pray to now?”

Joshua Haglund, a Mounds View High School and University of Minnesota
graduate, taught English in Japan, Tibet, India, Thailand and Puerto
Rico.

He went to Armenia in 2003 to teach English for a year at a university
as part of a U.S. State Department-funded exchange program.

His mother said Haglund had accepted an offer to teach English in
Saudi Arabia and planned to return to Minnesota before the assignment,
following a backpack trip through Iran.

According to published reports, it appeared Haglund was stabbed
inside his apartment and struggled outside following the deadly
assault. Authorities reported finding an open bottle of wine and
three glasses inside the apartment.

The family says U.S. Embassy and State Department officials were
initially helpful, working to transport Haglund’s body to Minnesota
and arranging for his mother’s October trip.

But there has been no word about the investigation or its progress –
no police report, no calls at all from Armenian police.

Haglund-Blommer says she does not even know if an autopsy was performed
on her son.

It is tough playing sleuth more than 6,000 miles from the scene of the
crime. But the wall of silence has led to speculation among relatives
and close friends that Haglund, who was gay, was a victim of a hate
crime in a country that considered homosexuality a crime against the
state until two years ago.

Others surmise Haglund was a fair but tough grader whose principles
ran afoul of a culture where it is acceptable to pay or receive bribes
for favors like a better grade.

A few wonder – because of his frequent travels – whether Haglund was
a covert CIA operative. His mother readily dismisses such a thought.

Meanwhile, she says she will continue to write, beg and implore for
help. “This has become a full-time job for me.”

Haglund-Blommer remembers her son as a bright and curious child with
an insatiable passion for learning about the world.

“It came to the point that our mailbox was often full of travel books,”
she recalled. “They were addressed to the Haglund Travel Agency. They
thought my son was a travel agency.”

The family released 33 yellow balloons at Haglund’s gravesite on the
one-year anniversary of his murder.

“Joshua liked the color yellow,” his mother said.