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Two Harvard graduate students facing assault charges over a confrontation at a pro-Palestine protest 18 months ago will not face a trial, Boston Municipal Court judge Stephen W. McClenon ruled on Monday.
Graduate students Elom Tettey-Tamaklo and Ibrahim I. Bharmal were charged with assault and battery in May — a charge that typically results in more than a year of jail time — after a confrontation at an October 2023 die-in protest at Harvard Business School.
In a video of the incident that gained national attention, Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal are seen approaching Israeli HBS student Yoav Segev, who was filming the protest, and blocking his camera while escorting him away from the protesters.
Segev can be heard saying “don’t touch me” to protestors on the video, though lawyers for the two graduate students have argued that Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal did not make physical contact with Segev.
McClenon’s decision — ordering both men to participate in pretrial diversion programming that allows them to avoid traditional criminal proceedings — comes nearly a year after prosecutors first filed charges over the HBS confrontation.
At the hearing, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight, the prosecutor, urged McClenon to require written statements from Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal to “acknowledge wrongdoing” along with apologies to Segev.
Defense attorneys Monica R. Shah and Naomi R. Shatz argued that requiring these statements would force an admission of guilt from the defendants despite not going to trial — which Shah argued was “antithetical” to the goal of pretrial diversion.
In a statement after the hearing, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin R. Hayden reiterated Knight’s position that Segev “is an entirely innocent victim.”
“He did nothing wrong leading up to this incident and nothing wrong during this incident,” Hayden wrote, adding that “our request that the defendants in this matter issue an apology and an admission of wrongdoing was entirely appropriate and reasonable.”
Though the defense recommended that Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal complete a Harvard-run negotiation course as a part of their diversionary programming, Knight argued during the hearing that programming should focus on holding the defendants “accountable for their wrongdoing.”
“This isn’t a discourse that fell apart. This was a hands-on assault and battery,” she said.
But McClenon, the judge, sided with the graduate students, requiring both to complete anger management programming, a Harvard course on negotiation, and 80 hours of community service — without the court-mandated apology that the District Attorney’s office had requested.
Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal will spend the next 90 days completing these programs, but both will avoid criminal conviction. They are set to reappear for a hearing evaluating their progress in July.
Monday’s ruling follows months of failed attempts at reaching an agreement outside of court.
Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo pleaded not guilty to the charges in November, more than a year after the protest. In the five months since, three status hearings have been ordered as the two sides struggled to come to an agreement over the specific terms of a pretrial diversion.
“We are pleased that the court agreed with us that a diversion was the appropriate resolution of this case,” Shatz, one of the lawyers for Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo, said after the hearing. “Our clients look forward to moving on with their lives.”
—Staff writer Matan H. Josephy can be reached matan.josephy@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @matanjosephy.
—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart or on Threads @laurel.shugart.
