Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

[The Consul]

The Aunt

[Hunter]

I believe this is the video - RT of course

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=ARE9rclZ ... RE9rclZCqw


A former member of this forums rush transcript of the aunt's claims ...

Best I can transcribe:"He was controlled by FBI for like 5, 3 years. They knew what my son was doing, they knew who- what actions and what the sites on internet he was going. They used to come home, they used come and talk to me, they used to talk to me, they used to ,tell me that, you know, that they are controlling his - ah- they were telling me that a he's a really ah, a serious leader and they are afraid of him, they said, they told me that, um whatever he's , he is, whatever… contri tudes?? side or whatever, is there, whatever information he's getting they are controlling him, so how could this happen? How could they, they were controlling every step of him and they are telling today that this is a terrorist act. Never ever this is not true."

WHAT IN THE......IS GOING ON HERE, I dont know what to say, holy shit.

[elfismiles]

Do Boston PD generall have dash cams? Will we likely ever see footage of the shoot out and bomb lobbing?

[Hunter]

CNN just said the mother claims the FBI had been following and making contact with older son for the last 3 years.


This is becoming some serious shit.


Thats what the media should be looking in to, that is no small matter...

[General Patton]

Most if not all PD in the US have dashcams, many of which are monitored by operators.

[barracuda]

"Stay indoors" order has been lifted.

[Hunter]

http://www.businessinsider.com/tsarnaev ... ing-2013-4


Mother says FBI in contact with son...


Zubeidat K. Tsarnaeva, the mother of Boston bombing suspects Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, suggested Friday that the FBI had been surveilling her older son for several years prior to Monday's attack.
In an interview with Russia Today Friday, Tsarnaeva said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev got involved in "religious politics" five years ago, and that the FBI had previously contacted her about her son's activities.
"He was controlled by the FBI, like for three, five years," she said. "They knew what my son was doing, they knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going [to], they used to come...and talk to me...they were telling me that he was really a serious leader and they were afraid of him."
"How could this happen?...They were controlling every step of him, and they are telling today that this is a terrorist attack," she added.
A spokesperson for the FBI told Business Insider Friday that the agency would be putting out a statement "shortly" regarding its previous contact with either of the Tsarnaev suspects. The spokesperson would not confirm or deny that the agency had had any previous contact.
Tsarnaeva doubled down on her statements later in the interview, insisting that her sons were innocent, and had been "set up" by the FBI:
"FBI, they were scared of my oldest son, they always told me that he's a leader...they are afraid of him because, you know, he is a leader, he talks about Islam a lot."
"They were talking to my son, and they called me officially and they told me that my son is an excellent boy and they have no problem with him," she added. "At the same time, they were telling me that...he is getting information on really extremists...sites, so they were very, very afraid of him. So that's why I think that this is a setup."
Tamerlan, 26, died Thursday night in a shootout with Boston Police. A manhunt is still underway for Tsarnaeva's younger son, Dzhoker, 19.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tsarnaev ... z2Qx3GOaX4





Major Garrett ✔ @MajorCBS

From CBS' Bob Orr: FBI interviewed Tamarlan Tsarnaev 2 yrs ago abt extremist ties, found nothing & closed file. More on CBS Evening News

[FourthBase]

More FB crossposting from FB:

"A lot of hate being thrown the aunt's way, but I have to completely agree with her about one thing: "Convince me." Meaning, one of these two scumbags is already dead, and the other one is already on the run. So, what's keeping the FBI from releasing video of the exact moment when #2 dropped down the backpack? It might set off the scumbag? He's already set off. It might hurt the feelings of the victims? Too late, and what are feelings anyway, compared to providing evidence? Show it, please, immediately. Nothing has been released which constitutes proof. Not even proof that these two were responsible for the epic clusterfuck last night. Convince us. What's the harm? Oh, right, it might spoil recollections for a trial. Well, if #2 (won't repeat his name, the evil piece of shit doesn't deserve to be remembered) winds up dead at the end of this chase, hopefully sooner than later, then there goes that excuse, and we would deserve to see all of the evidence, immediately. All of it. Don't be satisfied with only some."

"The aunt seems to have some very curious opinions about a longstanding preexisting relationship between the FBI and one of her nephews...?"

"Yeah, it's not some sign of mental instability or disloyalty to want one's government to account for itself. It's not a conspiracy theory. It's 100% dutiful citizenship and patriotic love. Not faithlessness, per se. Only in so far as a faith in a functioning democratic republic requires a certain amount of faithlessness."

[The Consul]

How long has it been since the mother saw them? Did she live in US? Why did they leave? Did she have actual contact with FBI? If so, there could be documentation of that contact, esp after physical contact there was additional made by phone. Right now, however, no one is in this country who could legally demand that information.


Interesting/convenient that both parents are not in the U.S. at this time.

[General Patton]

Yeah, they're going to be sieged by FOIA's

[Simulist]

Thanks, TC and Alchemy.

The video posted concerning the mother's remarks about the FBI's previous contact with her sons was very helpful. Earlier in this thread, Elfismiles posted a video that becomes especially pertinent now:

[seemslikeadream]

Washington Post

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were refugees from brutal conflict


By Peter Finn, Carol D. Leonnig and Will Englund, Updated: Friday, April 19, 2:30 PM

With their baseball hats and sauntering gaits, they appeared to friends and neighbors like ordinary American boys. But the Boston bombings suspects were refugees from another world — the blood, rubble and dirty wars of the Russian Caucasus.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was a southpaw heavyweight boxer who represented New England in the National Golden Gloves and talked about competing on behalf of the United States. His tangle-haired, 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, was a skateboarder who listened to rap and seemed easygoing to other kids in his Cambridge, Mass. neighborhood.

Tamerlan is now dead, killed in a shootout with police. Dzhokhar is on the run, the subject of a massive manhunt. And hidden behind their former lives in Massachusetts is a biography containing old resentments that appear to have mutated into radical Islamic violence.

The brothers who are alleged to have planted bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday reached the United States in 2002 after their ethnic Chechen family fled the Caucasus. They had been living in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan and were prevented from resettling in war-racked Chechnya.

In speaking about his boxing career in 2009, Tamerlan told a photographer that in the absence of an independent Chechnya he would rather compete for the United States than for Russia, a hint that past troubles were not forgotten. He appeared increasingly drawn to radical Islam. On a YouTube channel, he recently shared videos of lectures from a radical Islamic cleric; in one, voices can be heard singing in Arabic as bombs explode.

“My son, Tamerlan, got involved in religious politics, five years ago,” his mother, Zubeidat K. Tsarnaeva, told Russia Today television in an interview from Dagestan, the Russian republic bordering Chechnya where she and her husband are currently living. “He started following his own religious aspects. He never, never told me he would be on the side of jihad.”

His younger brother, who was widely known as “Jahar,” may have followed in his footsteps. “He talked about his brother in good ways,” said Pamala Rolon, who was the residential adviser in the dorm where Dzhokhar lived at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. “I could tell he looked up to his brother.”

Aslan Doukaev, an expert on the Caucasus who works for Radio Liberty in Prague, said there was “no doubt in my mind that the war in Chechnya — which is not over — absolutely affected their worldview.”

“But I’m slightly baffled why they decided to attack Americans on American soil,” he added. “Chechens have no grievances against Americans.”

While terrorists from the Caucasus have struck in Moscow and other parts of Russia, the conflict in the region has never led to attacks in other countries. One possible explanation for the Boston bombing, Doukaev said, is that the brothers were motivated by radical jihadism, not Chechen separatism.

As the war in Chechnya wound down after Russian forces withdrew — they left formally in 2009 — violence has spilled into neighboring republics such as Dagestan, where the Tsarnaev family once found shelter and where the brothers’ parents now live. That conflict is increasingly marked by radical Islamic terrorism in an often vicious cycle of attack and reprisal between insurgents and Russian security forces. Tamerlan visited Dagestan last year, according to an official with knowledge of his travels.
Speaking to journalists in Dagestan Friday, the brothers’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said his sons never had any interest in weapons. “I believe my children were set up,” he said.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen strongman, said that attempts “to draw a parallel between Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs, if they are guilty, are futile. They grew up in the U.S., and their views and beliefs were formed there. The roots of the evil should be looked for in America.”


The brothers suspected of being the Boston Marathon bombers lived in Kyrgyzstan (and possibly elsewhere) before emigrating to the United States in the early to mid-2000s.
Investigation into the Boston bombings

When the brothers were young, the family lived in Kyrgyzstan, a former republic of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, home to a small Chechen diaspora. Dzhokhar, the younger brother, was reportedly born there although his older brother was born in Russia, according to various reports.

The family lived in Tokmok, a town of about 55,000 people in northern Kyrgyzstan, near the border with Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz National State Security Committee said in a statement Friday. Kyrgyz officials said the family left the country about 12 years ago for Dagestan, and after a year there emigrated to the United States.

Anzor Tsarnaev and his wife arrived in the United States in early 2002 after winning refu­gee status. Their two sons and two daughters followed a short time later with an aunt.

The father worked as an auto mechanic. Jerry Siegel, owner of Webster’s Auto Body, in Somerville, Mass., said that the elder Tsarnaev worked for him for about 18 months and that he was an excellent mechanic who spoke very little English.

“He was just a hard-working, strong, tough guy,” said Siegel. “He would get under a car in the middle of winter, did whatever I asked.”

Siegel said Anzor left about four years ago for another mechanic’s job. Sometime after that, Anzor got sick and returned to Russia, according to other officials.

His wife is registered as a cosmetologist. If she returns to the United States, she is facing a criminal trial in Natick, Mass., after police said they arrested her last year trying to steal up to nine women’s dresses from a Lord & Taylor store at a local mall.

Tamerlan studied accounting at Bunker Hill Community College for three semesters as a part-time student between the fall of 2006 and the fall of 2008, according to Patricia Brady, a college spokesperson.

When Tamerlan dropped out of school, his father was “desperate,” according to Anzor’s sister, Maret.

“The father had very high expectations for his son,” she said at a press conference in Toronto.

Tamerlan began boxing shortly after arriving in the United States. He registered with USA Boxing, the governing body for Olympic-style boxing, as early as 2003 and steadily rose through the ranks. By 2009, he reached the national Golden Gloves tournament in Salt Lake City, where he lost in a three-round decision bout with a boxer from Chicago.

Colleagues all described him as athletic, and aggressive. “He was tall, taller than most of the guys, and tough,” said Paul Barry, vice president of the New England Boxing Association in Worcester, Mass., who once judged one of Tamerlan’s bouts.

Tamerlan was arrested in 2009 and charged with domestic assault and battery after allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, according to Spotcrime.com, an online source of crime information.

Tamerlan was married to Katherine Russell, 23, and the couple had a baby daughter, according to neighbors. They met while Katherine was studying at a college in Boston, and recently spent considerable time at her childhood home in North Kingstown, R.I., according to neighbors.

One next-door neighbor, Paula Gillettte, said Katherine had gone through a dramatic transition in her dress since going to college in Boston. When she returned for visits, she was wearing a head covering and the long-flowing gowns of traditional Muslim women; she also stayed inside more.

In 2011, Dzhokhar graduated high school, where he was the captain of the wrestling team, and went on to study at the University of Massachusetts. He hoped to become a dentist.

Dzhokhar was an avid skateboarder, and Sunday night before the Monday bombing he cruised down Norfolk Street toward the house where his family has lived, said Caprice Ruff, 18, a grocery store cashier who lives about five houses away, across the street, on the same block in Cambridge.

She and family members were on their porch, and one called out a greeting and complimented him on his skateboard at about 10:30 p.m., Ruff recalled. He answered something like, “Yeah, thanks,” she said.

Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the suspected bombers, said he was ashamed of them and urged Dzhokhar to turn himself in and beg forgiveness from the bombing victims. Asked what provoked his nephews, he replied: “Being losers — hatred to those who were able to settle themselves.”

“We are Muslim. We are ethnic Chechens,” he told reporters outside his house in Montgomery Village. “Somebody radicalized them, but it was not my brother…Of course we are ashamed. They are the children of my brother, who has little influence [over] them.”

[General Patton]

Interpol just released a global bulletin.

http://www.interpol.int/News-and-media/ ... 2013/PR050

[FourthBase]

Shots fired again, in Watertown.

[General Patton]

We still don't know if there are more than two suspects. We've already had the one old man in Watertown with the deadmans switch.