Many questions remain unanswered about the Boston Marathon Bombings that took place on April 15, 2013. Three people were killed and two hundred and sixty-four others were injured during the tragedy. Originally, the mainstream media reported that an arrest had been made and that «a dark skinned man» (ignorantly assumed by many to be of Arab background) was the suspected perpetrator of the attacks in Boston. John King from the Cable News Network (CNN) would insist that he was personally told that «a dark skinned man» was the one. Then reports that a suspect had been caught and arrested began. Journalists and interested people would gather around Boston’s federal courthouse with the hopes of finding out more and getting a glimpse of the detained suspect. In a case of odd timing, after the media reports about an arrest began, a bomb threat was called into Boston’s federal courthouse and the journalists around the building, as well as most people, were forced to evacuate the area.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would then release photographs of the Tsarnaev brothers and publicly state that they were the suspects behind the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Soon after, the Tsarnaev brothers would allegedly kill a university policeman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and then carjack a Mercedes sports utility vehicle (SUV). Reports that they robbed a 7-Eleven convenience store would also surface, but be denied by the 7-Eleven franchise as wrong. It would later be reported that a shootout between the two brothers and the pursuing police in the suburb of Watertown, which is part of Greater Boston, would take place.
It was reported that during the fighting a law enforcement officer from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Police would be injured and Tamerlan, the older of the Tsarnaev brothers, would be killed by police fire. Tamerlan’s aunt and family, however, say that this is not true because they identified seeing him «naked, cuffed, clearly alive and [a] well detainee seen in video aired by CNN» to Dan Dicks of Press For Truth. The multiple bullet wounds on Tamerlan’s body have also led to many questions. Furthermore, it would later be reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev actually died under police custody and not while fighting police.
The police reported that Dzhokhar, the younger of the two brothers, escaped with injuries during the shootout. Hours later, Dzhokhar was found hiding inside a boat without any weapons and taken to the hospital under armed guard. Because he was shot in the throat, he could not talk or disclose anything. It was surprising that the teenager could survive and function normally on his own for such a long length of time after he took a bullet to the throat. Others questioned how he became unconscious (for a period of days) only after police arrested him and how he seemed unaffected in police footage of him inside the boat. It was also later reported that Dzhokhar shot himself in the throat in a botched suicide attempt during his last stand with the police.
Domestic Firing Squads?
There are many strange twists and turns tied to the Boston Marathon Bombings that give rise to more questions. The strange features in the event include the suspect’s background and the odd chain of happenings after the arrest of the Tsarnaevs. What the parents of the Tsarnaev brothers in Russia, which adamantly say their two sons were framed, have disclosed has also added to suspicions.
Then there is the string of deaths after the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The FBI’s Special Agent Christopher Lorek and Special Agent Stephen Shaw, who arrested Dzhokhar, were mysteriously killed on May 17, 2013. In a case of strange timing, during what is presented as a freak accident, the two FBI agents where killed during a training mission when they were reported to have fallen out of their helicopter off the Atlantic coast of Virginia. Officially, bad weather was reported to be the cause of their deaths.
The death of the FBI special agents can be compared to the death of the team of US Navy SEALs who allegedly killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. The story of Osama bin Laden’s death is another story full of inconsistencies. The Obama Administration was caught being deceitful about watching the killing live and then there is the case of Osama’s missing body that was supposedly and clumsily justified by the wrong claim that it was dumped into the ocean to respect Muslim customs. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) also released a short interview with a Pakistani resident living near the home saying that the man who was killed was not Osama bin Laden. Nor were any pictures of Osama bin Laden ever provided.
The irregularities did not end there. The group of US Navy SEALs involved with the operation would all end up dying on August 6, 2011 when their helicopter was shot down in NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan. SEAL Team VI, which was the unit’s name, actually had their identities and area of operations in Afghanistan revealed by the Obama Administration while they were serving, which is believed to have made them targets. SEAL Team VI was also oddly put into an old and vulnerable Chinook helicopter on the day that they were killed. As a result of this, the families of the dead Navy SEAL commandos have blamed the US federal government for their deaths, saying that the shooting of the helicopter was planned by the US government as part of a cover-up for its own lies.
Moving on, the death of the two FBI special agents adds to the suspicion around the death of a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev named Ibragim Todashev. Todashev was killed in his own apartment while under police supervision by the FBI in Orlando, Florida. He was killed by police fire after being interrogated for days about the Boston Marathon Bombings. He was also «unarmed» and killed by a shot to the centre of the head, or by a «kill shot.» His friend, Khusen Taramov, said that Todashev was planning on returning to Russia, but voluntarily stayed to cooperate with investigators because the FBI had asked him to stay in Florida.
It was originally claimed by the FBI that Todashev’s death happened when he «flipped out» and attacked the police with a knife during the interview. This, however, contradicts character statements about him and the fact that he was voluntarily cooperating with US authorities. His father, Abdulbaki Todashev, would hold a press conference in Moscow shortly after his shooting to tell the world that his son was shot six times in the torso and once in his head. Todashev’s father would accuse US authorities of executing his son.
The Plot Thickens in Canada and Western Europe
The Boston Marathon Bombings were followed by other peculiar events outside the United States. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Canada would declare that it had stopped a terrorist attack from taking place on Canadian soil by arresting two men on April 22. The RCMP would keenly point out that the suspects were linked to a branch of Al-Qaeda oddly working inside of Iran of all places. The timing of the arrests, after the Boston Marathon Bombings, was announced in a high-profile RCMP press conference which virtually refused to comment on anything because it said that the investigation was inconclusive and ongoing.
In London, a British soldier from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers would be hit by a car and publicly lacerated and stabbed to death with knives on the street outside the Royal Artillery Barracks by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale on May 22. Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron was in France, across the English Channel, during the savage murder. It just so happened that a French soldier was also stabbed at around the same time, but French authorities made statements saying that there seemed to be no connection between the two attacks.
Both the British and French cases have been linked to British and French militarism and foreign policy either directly or indirectly. In the case of Britain the attackers talked about Britain’s roles in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of France, the attack on the French soldier was speculated to be the result of France’s military intervention in Mali. The effects of these attacks, however, merit more attention than the actual causes.
Militarization of the So-Called Democracies?
Because of the Boston Marathon Bombing the city of Boston was placed under martial law and civil liberties were suspended as a manhunt was conducted. This is an important dimension of the dangerous ramifications that the event has had for decisive and unconstitutional domestic security measure being taken inside the United States. It comes at a time when the Department of Homeland Security has been assembling a massive weapons arsenal and all checks and balances on domestic spying have been destroyed.
The Associated Press has reported that Homeland Security has been stockpiling ammunition by buying more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. The same AP report has also said that Homeland Security has already bought a staggering 1.5 billion rounds of ammunition in 2012. This ammunition amounts to more bullets than the Pentagon has used collectively in all the wars that the US has been involved in the last decade.
Aside from martial law in Boston, the US federal government also considered taking the illegal step of charging Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant in front of a military tribunal. This quickly scared civil liberties organizations in the United States, because they understood what it could lead towards. Such a move would equate to the suspension of the rights of American citizens and putting them on trial in virtual secrecy. This would set a very dangerous precedent. It should be added that this is part of the same pattern of developments that has seen the US government use killer drones to kill its own citizens overseas illegally without any due process to determine their guilt legally.
When the ridicule of the assertions that Al-Qaeda was working inside Iran was pointed out in Canada, it was posited that it could have been the terrorist group Jundallah that was guiding the perpetrators against the Canadian province of Ontario’s V IA Rail train line going to New York in the United States. Jundallah has been linked to Al-Qaeda and this has been used to explain the inconsistency in the claims that put Iran into the picture. Very importantly, it should be pointed out that Jundallah is a US-supported terrorist organization that has been working to destabilize Iran from the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan with US assistance. In this context, the trail leads back to the US government itself. Moreover, the Canadian government has opportunistically used the event to harden its policing and surveillance programs, which allow it to violate the civil liberties of Canadians.
In the case of Britain, Michael Adebolajo it would turn out had a connection to the British secret services. Adebolajo had been approached six months earlier to work for MI5, but refused. A friend of his, Abu Nusaybah, wrote the following on his Twitter account: «Did u know Woolwich suspect Michael Adebolajo was approached by MI5 Just over 6months [sic.] ago to work as a Spy, He refused?» The BBC would interview Adebolajo’s friend on Newsnight where he would make the same comments about MI5. Abu Nusaybah would then be arrested for revealing that MI5 had been trying to recruit Michael Adebolajo afterwards and charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act. Moreover, the British government has used the event to expand its internal policing and surveillance programs like Canada.
There is a major political context tied to all these events. In both Boston and London we now see that charges of terrorism are being introduced in a way that sidelines civil rights in an Orwellian sense. The crude homemade bomb used in Boston was labeled a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) on par with chemical and nuclear weapons. A disgusting act of murder was labeled as an act of terrorism In the United Kingdom when in reality a charge of homicide should have been pressed. The label of terrorism is now being used to give the US government and its allies a licensee to act outside of their laws and dramatically expand their domestic and overseas screening programs.
Blaming Russia: America Intending to Start a New Fire in the Caucasus?
Indirectly Russia is being blamed for the Boston Marathon Bombings. The Tsarnaev brothers, who are half ethnic Chechen and half ethnic Avar, are being identified with Russia even though they spent a great deal of their lives outside the Russian Federation and are US citizens. Dzhokhar was born in Kyrgyzstan, where he spent his childhood years.
In some ways the string of events following the Boston Marathon Bombings are making Russia and Iran look like countries that cannot control their own borders. Russia has been presented as a breeding ground for terrorists and militants, while Iran has been portrayed as a new base for Al-Qaeda. Neither of these portrayals is accurate. Little is mentioned about the role of the US in destabilizing the border regions of either country.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the two Tsarnaev brothers, told the world that she believed that her sons were set up by the US government. She has challenged the official narrative about the terrorist attack in Boston. She has let it be known that her family knew that the FBI was always watching them and that her sons were under constant police surveillance. She even said that the police use to come to their home in the US all the time to talk to them and that her sons were under «police control».
What Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said about her sons being under police surveillance was true. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been on a US federal government database of potential terrorism suspects. According to US officials, they were twice warned by Russia that he may have been tied to Caucasian militants. In 2011, Russians security officials requested that the US investigate Tamerlan’s activities. The FBI would make a brief investigation and then close the case leading to unsatisfied Russian security officials making the same request four months later in September 2011. Tamerlan was actually being watched by the Russian secret services whenever he visited the Russian Federation.
The possibility exists that Tamerlan Tsarnaev may well have been working for US interests to destabilize Russia and the Caucasus. According to Russian sources he attended an anti-Russian workshop in the Caucasus called the Fund of the Caucasus that was supported by Georgia and the United States. All the small details that have come up about him show that he had been interacting with US authorities and that he was suspected of espionage in Russia.
The arrest of the CIA’s station head, Ryan C. Fogle, in Moscow adds an additional layer to the story. Fogle, the third secretary of the Political Section of the US Embassy in Moscow and a career diplomat, was arrested while he was trying to recruit an agent of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who worked on the North Caucasus. Fogle’s espionage effort was portrayed in the US as an effort to learn more about the Boston Marathon Bombings. Benjamin Dillon, another third secretary at the US Embassy in Moscow, was expelled for trying to recruit Russian security officials prior to Fogle’s expulsion from Russia as a spy. According to Russia’s FSB, even earlier several other CIA agents were caught doing the same thing, but left voluntarily.
The murder of Russia’s Muslim leaders in the North Caucasus coincides with notions that the United States is planning to destabilize Russia’s North Caucasus. After Syria, in fact, there are strong fears that Russia’s North Caucasus, along with Lebanon and Iraq, will be the next targets of anti-government militants in Syria. Furthermore, there has been a steady campaign to demonize Russia in the US mainstream media as an undemocratic global supporter of authoritarianism and genocide. In the last few years there have been terrorist attacks that have targeted Muslim spiritual leaders in the Caucasus, particularly Dagestan. All these leaders have called for harmony and co-existence among Russia’s Muslim and Christian populations; they have opposed militarism and violence. While the Tsarnaev case may have direct ramifications for civil liberties inside the United States, it is also tied to longstanding US encroachment on the Caucasus that seeks to destabilize the Russian Federation.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a social scientist, award-winning writer, columnist, and researcher. His works have been carried internationally in a broad series of publications and have been translated into more than twenty languages including German, Arabic, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Armenian, Persian, Dutch and Romanian. His work in geopolitical sciences and strategic studies has been used by various academic and defense establishments in their papers and defense colleges for military officers. He is also a frequent guest on international news networks as a geopolitical analyst and expert on the Middle East.
