#1 Boston Marathon Explosions - Three dead - dozens more injured

[Bev]

Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev died from gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to his head and torso, a funeral home revealed today.

Worcester funeral home owner Peter Stefan who was holding the body of 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev read the details from his death certificate on Friday.

The certificate cites Tsarnaev's 'gunshot wounds of torso and extremities' and lists the time of his death as 1:35 a.m. on April 19, four days after the deadly bombing, Stefan said.

It comes as authorities reportedly found explosive residue in the sink, bath tub and kitchen table in the home Tamerlan shared with his wife Katherine Russell.

The discovery will fuel speculation over how much she knew about the attacks.

Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with authorities who had launched a massive manhunt for him and his brother, ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago.

Police have said he ran out of ammunition before his younger brother dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing.

Tsarnaev's family on Friday was making arrangements for his funeral as investigators searched the woods near a college attended by 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured less than a day after his brother's death.

However they are apprently having trouble finding a place for the body.

'My problem here is trying to find a gravesite. A lot of people don't want to do it. They don't want to be involved with this,' said Stefan, who said dozens of protesters gathered outside his funeral home, upset with his decision to handle the service. 'I keep bringing up the point of Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh or Ted Bundy. Somebody had to do those, too.'

The funeral parlor in Worcester is familiar with Muslim services and said it will handle arrangements for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose body was released by the state medical examiner on Thursday night.

The body was taken initially to a North Attleborough funeral home, where it was greeted by about 20 protesters.

On Friday a woman answering a phone at the funeral parlor said it has since been removed and taken elsewhere, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...esome-end.html

[Bev]

Federal officials investigating the Boston bombings have discovered radical Islamist materials on a computer belonging to the widow of the deceased suspect, it has been revealed.

Katherine Russell, 24, has repeatedly claimed through her attorney that she knew nothing about the deadly April 15 bombings allegedly set off by her late husband, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar.

However, the discovery of al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine on Russell’s computer, along with the presence of explosive residue throughout their home, have raised new questions about Russell's possible involvement in the act of terror.

According to a government document obtained by NBC News, an analysis of the bombs used at the Boston Marathon and pipe bombs that the Tsarnaevs had allegedly thrown at police may have been built following instructions that appeared in an Inspire article titled: Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...idue-home.html

.....gosh, we never saw that one coming.

[Roy]

Originally Posted by Bev

The ZOG lies its ass off everyday, and frequently on matters that cause war and death, like WMD claims in Iraq. It is the supreme pinnacle of hypocrisy for the ZOG politicians to make a law against lying. I have zero sympathy for terrorists and their abettors, but if this guy did something untoward, then he should be charged for THAT, not his words.

[Bev]

Originally Posted by Roy

The ZOG lies its ass off everyday, and frequently on matters that cause war and death, like WMD claims in Iraq. It is the supreme pinnacle of hypocrisy for the ZOG politicians to make a law against lying. I have zero sympathy for terrorists and their abettors, but if this guy did something untoward, then he should be charged for THAT, not his words.

As far as I can gather, he allegedly took a backpack filled with emptied fireworks (and a term paper conveniently bearing the name of one of the alleged bombers) from a dorm room and threw it in the bin outside the dorm room.

I've been unable to find out where the lying part comes in, but yes, you're right on the law of "lying" - something both your and our government has done on everything from WMDs to our army operating drones for the US.

Talking of lying, he's Ethiopian, not American.

[STZ]

The fat, self-loathing, Dr. Pepper throwing psychopathic pedophile is finally gone for good? Bravo!

[john-connor]

http://www.independent.ie/world-news...-29254816.html Katherine Russell, the widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has hired a prominent criminal lawyer with experience defending terrorism cases as she continues to face questions (AP)

09 May 2013

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried in an undisclosed location outside the city of Worcester, police said after a frustrating week-long search for a community willing to take the body.


Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst said the body was no longer in Worcester, east of Boston, and is now entombed. Police did not specify where the body was taken. "As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased," Worcester police said in a statement.

Tsarnaev's body had been at the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlours. Director Peter Stefan had said he could not find a community willing to take the body, including Cambridge, where the family had lived for a decade. Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, had custody of the body.

Meanwhile, Tsarnaev's widow continues to face questions from federal authorities and has hired a criminal lawyer with experience defending terrorism cases.

Katherine Russell added New York lawyer Joshua Dratel to her legal team, her lawyer Amato DeLuca said. Mr Dratel has represented a number of terrorism suspects.

Mr Dratel's "unique, specialised experience" will help ensure that Ms Russell "can assist in the ongoing investigation in the most constructive way possible," Mr DeLuca said in a statement. He said Ms Russell, who has not been charged with any crime, will continue to meet investigators as "part of a series of meetings over many hours where she has answered questions."

An FBI spokeswoman wouldn't comment on whether Ms Russell is co-operating. Mr DeLuca has said she had no reason to suspect her husband and his brother in the deadly April 15 bombing.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechen brothers from southern Russia and living in Massachusetts, are accused of planting two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs near the marathon finish line, killing three people and injuring about 260.

Dzhokhar, who was captured hiding in a tarp-covered boat outside a house in a Boston suburb, was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Their mother has said the charges against them are lies. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a getaway attempt after a gunbattle with police.

In Washington, the first in a series of hearings to review the government's initial response to the bombing began. They will address what information authorities received about the brothers before the bombings and whether they handled it correctly. The FBI and CIA separately received vague warnings from Russia's government in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother were religious militants.

Press Association

[Roy]

Goodbye note from terrorist smugly calls the victims of his bombings "collateral damage".

Sources tell Miller that Tsarnaev wrote the note in the boat he was hiding in as police pursued him, and as he bled from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier shootout between police and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It reads as part manifesto, part suicide note, and part justification for the killing and maiming of innocent civilians.

The note -- scrawled with a marker on the interior wall of the cabin -- said the bombings were retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims "collateral damage" in the same way Muslims have been in the American-led wars. "When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims," Tsarnaev wrote.

Dzhokar said he didn't mourn older brother Tamerlan, the other suspect in the bombings, writing that by that point, Tamerlan was a martyr in paradise -- and that he expected to join him there soon.


Miller's sources say the wall the note was written on was riddled with bullet holes from over one hundred rounds fired into the hull of the boat, shots were fired after Dzhokhar came up through the tarp covering the boat amid police fears that he had a firearm or more explosive devices.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_1...n-sources-say/

[Bev]

But old-fashioned sniffer dogs, each trained at a cost of £20,000, remain invaluable, saving the lives of countless servicemen.

Major Steve Leavis, officer commanding the Army's Canine Training Squadron, said: 'Dogs have a proven track record. They can be quicker than technical solutions and don't go wrong. Give them food and sleep and you have a top-quality bomb disposal unit.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...s-weapons.html


Just sayin'.

[Armstrong]

One can hope they work better in Afghanistan than the ones the NYPD or whatever agency was at Boston had. Though if VOe's posts are accurate, they don't seem to be.

[Leonard Rouse]

[Version with embedded hyperlinks linked at bottom.]

Officer Collier Shooting: “Rosebud” Moment of the Boston Bombing? The Contradictions Keep Coming

By Russ Baker on May 23, 2013

All one has to do is consider the eyewitness accounts of the shootout in Watertown to realize that the Tsarnaev brothers were almost certainly not—as a surprisingly large number of people posting comments on this site and around the Internet seem to believe—harmless naïfs who did nothing wrong. Whether or not they planted the bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon, whether or not they acted alone or in concert with others, whether they were ideologues or dupes, it seems evident that they were involved in some kind of violent adventure culminating in the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the shooting and apprehension of his brother Dzhokhar.

I spent Wednesday of this week talking to residents of the streets where the shootouts took place, and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that both brothers were there, were armed, and threw bombs at police.

Nonetheless, many aspects of the story remain unclear, and decidedly troublesome. And getting to the bottom of this complex story is not just an option—we cannot afford as a society to have large traumas of this sort come and go without clarity. Otherwise, we are all dupes, of one kind or another.

We’ve raised reasonable questions about the events surrounding the Marathon bombing in previous articles, from the presence of mysterious black-clad security men with well-stuffed backpacks at the race to the FBI and CIA’s awareness of the Tsarnaev family long before April 15, 2013. (See this, this and this.)

Now, some might say that nothing else matters as long as police got their men. However, it is often in the details, the “weeds,” if you will, where we find that a narrative can be useful as far as it goes and yet terribly misleading in terms of what it all means. As we’ve noted, many much-loved historical narratives turn out to be little more than carefully crafted myths around a few core facts.

Our media and our leading interpreters of events explain everything in terms that the unsophisticated can easily grasp. Yet in the real world, happenings may take place for a welter of reasons that even those directly involved may not be aware of.

It is with this in mind that we’ve been down in the weeds.

The “Confession”

If there’s one thing out of all the “facts” that emerged in the early hours and days after the bombing that cemented the Tsarnaevs’ capital-G Guilt, it was, unquestionably, the killing of MIT police officer Sean Collier on the night of Thursday, April 18, three days after the explosions at the Marathon.

At the time of Collier’s shooting, the FBI had just released video of two unnamed “persons of interest” walking with backpacks—shown amid many other people walking with backpacks. The still-anonymous Tsarnaevs were nothing more than people with whom the FBI wanted to talk. No hard evidence had been released that connected them to the bombing itself.

Within hours of the FBI video release, everything went nuts. First came word of “officer down” at MIT. Then, quickly, news of a carjacking. Then police swarming everywhere. Then a shootout and the death of one suspect, followed by a lull, and then the discovery and near-death of the second suspect.

Soon came the narrative to explain much, if not all. The suspects in the video had been behind both the bombing and the killing of the police officer. We knew that because the carjacking victim had escaped, and told police and later selected media how his captors had confessed to him.

Boston Globe reporter Eric Moskowitz gained cooperation from the still-unnamed hostage (nicknamed “Danny”). Here’s a portion of Danny’s tale, in which the elder Tsarnaev, Tamerlan, confessed during the carjacking:

He asked if [Danny] had followed the news about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings…

[snip]

“I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”

We’ll have more to say about the carjacking in a subsequent article. But for now, the key thing to remember is that in some ways, the shooting of Officer Collier immediately before the carjacking and the alleged confession in the car—to both crimes—were absolutely essential in creating the first profile of the Tsarnaevs as murder-minded individuals, not just two guys on a video wearing backpacks.

Collier as Officer Tippit

Besides playing a central role in establishing a case against the brothers, Collier’s death also served a powerful symbolic purpose in the official narrative, with a huge memorial service for the MIT officer on April 24, addressed by Vice President Biden. Throughout, the spotlight has been on Collier as Hero—a kind of ritualistic hagiography devoid of any inclination to investigate the actual circumstances of his death.

For students of history, however, this part of the narrative had a familiar ring. Exactly half a century ago, another traumatic event took place: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The big break in that case came several hours later, when a police officer, J.D. Tippit, was shot and killed. Soon, one of the many employees in a tall building on Kennedy’s parade route, Lee Harvey Oswald, was connected to both events. Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had recently spent time in Russia. Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been under scrutiny by the FBI before the crime.

In both cases, it was the killing of a police officer that turbocharged the police pursuit—and that, once the suspect was apprehended, convinced the public quickly that the police had their man.

Until the shooting of officer Collier, the Tsarnaevs were just two guys seen on a video wearing backpacks. And until the Tippit shooting, Oswald was just one of many employees in a building that most eyewitnesses felt was not even the source of the shots that killed Kennedy.

In both cases, the shooting of the police officer did not make a lot of sense in the context of the “main event” – but nevertheless gave the pursuit a jolt of adrenaline. Only later would crucial details of the narrative be changed—at a time when few would notice.

A Myth

In the case of Oswald, serious doubts would emerge as to whether he had killed Officer Tippit.

In the case of Officer Collier, if we look carefully, we can see that the script was rewritten after most people stopped paying attention.

Early reports left the impression that Collier had some kind of active interaction with his killers.

Here’s the Associated Press from that night:

Cambridge police and the Middlesex District Attorney’s office says the officer was responding to a report of a disturbance when he was shot multiple times.

Here’s the MIT News—the publication of the university’s administration—several days later:

On the evening of Thursday, April 18, MIT Police Officer Sean Collier was shot and killed in the line of duty following an altercation at the corner of Vassar Street and Main Street on the MIT campus.

And here’s the Los Angeles Times on April 23, five days after Collier’s death:

WASHINGTON–Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Thursday because they wanted his service revolver, according to two federal government law enforcement officials who have been briefed on the Boston Marathon manhunt.

They came upon Collier outside a gas station and convenience store near the MIT campus in Cambridge. He was apparently shot multiple times, but had left a safety device on his holster that the suspects could not unlock to retrieve the weapon.

It was unclear which brother shot the officer, the officials said. However, authorities have obtained a surveillance photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, dressed in a gray hoodie, at the store.

This is a false story, circulated days after the events. Collier was not outside a gas station and convenience store. Dzhokhar certainly appears to have gone into a gas station/convenience store later that evening, but Collier was not there and no murder took place at that time. Collier did not respond to a disturbance. He did not approach anyone. In fact, it’s likely he never even knew who shot him.

To this day, hardly anyone in the general public is aware of this glitch in the narrative. Yet it is very important. Because if the initial story had been, “unknown persons came up behind a police officer sitting quietly in his patrol car and shot him for no apparent reason, not even taking his firearm” – that would no doubt have triggered a very different media response.

Keeping up the Hero Story

It was for some reason very important to someone that the death of this police officer be projected on a massive screen. Consider the content and tone of this, from the Boston Herald:

Thousands of students and law enforcement officers from across the country have packed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus to honor fallen MIT Police Officer Sean Collier who was remembered as a joy-filled, caring and compassionate man who believed kindness could change society.

MIT set aside 15,000 seats at Briggs Field and every one was filled, with law enforcement officers making up two-thirds of the heartbroken audience.

Here’s the Atlantic Wire:

MIT held a public memorial service Wednesday afternoon for fallen officer Sean Collier on their Briggs Field, where the 26-year-old university police officer was remembered for his commitment to the school community, his love of country music, and his dedication to his job. Vice President Joe Biden closed the ceremony’s remarks, offering words of condolence to the family from the perspective of someone who had also lost a child—before offering a scathing indictment of the Tsarnaev brothers’ terrorism.

MIT cancelled classes for the service, which brought together members of the MIT community, law enforcement officers, and public officials. A private funeral was held Tuesday. Yesterday, CBS News reported that Collier may have been killed because the Tsarnaev brothers wanted his gun.

Yet, even after it was clear that Collier had done nothing more than sit in his car while someone came up behind him and shot him, the authorities were still feeling it necessary to lay it on thick. On April 25, a week after Collier’s death, the New York Times was reporting

“I [still] consider him a hero,” Boston’s police commissioner, Edward Davis, said in an interview this week. “It was his death that ultimately led to the apprehension. The report of the shot officer led to all those resources being poured in.”

A cop had been shot, “all those resources” were poured into that general vicinity, and a juggernaut had been launched. There was nothing that would reverse it. Indeed, a month after Collier’s death, a Cambridge, MA, brewery announced it was issuing a special “Collier Stout” in his honor.

Why were we more upset over Collier’s death than other deaths of law enforcement personnel? Because it was linked, in the public’s mind, with the assault upon America itself at the Marathon. The killing of Collier, we were told, was an act against us all. “Boston Strong.” “America Strong.” In a sense, when we wore those ribbons, attended those mass ceremonies, we were mourning, yet again, our loss of innocence in the face of a world that seems to be spinning out of control.

Why Was Collier Killed?

Here’s what we were told at the time of that memorial service:

Until now, it is not been clear why the officer – who was laid to rest today at a private funeral service in his hometown of Stoneham, Massachusetts – was shot dead.

The officer was slain execution-style as he sat in his patrol car at the MIT campus in the suburb of Cambridge.

But now, according to CBS News, police believe the officer was ambushed by the Tsarnaev brothers in a botched attempt to take his gun to boost their arsenal of just one real gun and a pellet gun.

We have been told that, perhaps, the brothers wanted his gun.

Yet, they did not take it. The police chief explained that maybe they could not get it out of his holster, because it was found still in the holster. But it is also possible that whoever shot him was not interested in taking his gun.

It is also important to understand that the CBS News coverage—including the dubious claim that Collier was killed in an attempt to get his gun, and the belated story that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scrawled a confession on the interior walls of a boat while he lay bloody and grievously wounded – is helmed by John Miller, CBS Senior Correspondent, who between journalistic stints served as the top spokesman for the FBI. In other words, it is an FBI insider who is guiding the narrative. Of course, the FBI itself has serious credibility problems, including the fact that it failed to disclose that it knew exactly who the Tsarnaevs were, long before the bombing. (On May 22, an FBI agent shot and killed Ibragim Todashev, another person of Chechen origin connected to the story and the investigation—whom a friend claims had recently warned him that he felt he was in the process of being framed; and who reportedly had, at the time of his death, just confessed.)

As we previously noted, all of these shootings warrant a closer look—including why so many shots were fired at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as he lay wounded in that boat, firing not a single shot, and given the potential importance of him as a witness.

All of this must be addressed. But for the purposes of this article, let’s stay focused on Officer Collier’s death—and the circumstances surrounding it.

Why Would the Brothers Have Been on the MIT Campus?

Nobody seems to know. Would they have been there because they knew they would find an officer sitting in his car between buildings? If not, it means the brothers randomly passed through this unlikely area and happened upon Collier in his unlikely spot, snuck up behind him, killed him, and then—took nothing.

Why Collier Was Where He Was

Why was Collier even sitting in his police car at that time? According to news accounts, Collier was parked near the intersection of two streets in Cambridge for the purpose of preventing illegal shortcuts through campus. Here’s the Boston Globe’s account:

About 9:30 p.m., Collier was on routine patrol. He was parked by the corner of Vassar and Main streets. It was a spot where motorists would sometimes take a chance, making an illegal shortcut through campus to avoid a red light.

“We ask patrols to sit there,” DiFava explained. It prevents the forbidden cut-throughs and it provides a high-profile presence for the MIT community.

Something crucial is missing from this account. Collier was not parked on the street. He was parked on the pavement, a distance from the corner, between two campus buildings. When I asked students about the scenario Chief DiFava presented, they were baffled. They didn’t recall patrols sitting between those buildings, and it was not apparent how or why anyone would save a minute at a red light by climbing the pavement and driving between buildings.

With crazed terrorist bombers on the loose, why was this officer sitting where he was? I hoped to clear this up with Chief DiFava. Especially since DiFava is not just MIT’s police chief, but also the chief of MIT “facilities operations.” Thus, he had oversight of facilities including the many sensitive research facilities scattered around the campus, some close to where Collier died.

At the campus police station, I was first told that he was…in Guatemala. Why Guatemala? Why go so far away to a foreign country at the very time that everyone most wanted to talk to him? In any case, I was soon informed that he had been in Guatemala, but just returned. But he had left again. Now he was in Washington. Why Washington? Something to do with the case? But again I was told he was back, but out on business off campus.

Then I was told that maybe he was not off campus, but that in any case, he preferred not to talk. I wondered why that would be, when he had already shown a willingness to talk. Then I was told that I needed to go through the MIT central authorities. Was it the chief who did not want to talk, or was he told not to?

I tried to talk to the Emergency Medical Technicians, students who volunteer to handle campus emergencies, and whose colleagues showed up with their ambulance at the scene of the shooting—they declined and I left. And then I got this email from MIT’s Executive Vice President for Communications:

Mr. Baker,

I have heard from a number of people at MIT that you have been on campus today wanting to ask people questions about the week of the marathon.

Your approach—visiting very busy people in person unannounced to ask them about this painful subject—is not productive, and in some cases, it has proved upsetting. I need to ask that you please follow the guidance that my colleague….. gave you over the phone today. You should email her whatever questions you have, and we can go from there.

Can you agree to this, please?

The Video

Significantly, we’ve been assured that the Tsarnaevs were Collier’s killers.

Here’s a report from the afternoon of Friday, April 19, from the Associated Press—probably the major source of information for the nation’s media, essentially stating that the Tsarnaevs committed the shooting:

WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) — Two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing — identified to The Associated Press as coming from the Russian region near Chechnya — killed an MIT police officer, injured a transit officer in a firefight and threw explosive devices at police during their getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left one of them dead and another still at large Friday, authorities said.

Nine days later, on April 28, we see this from the Boston Globe’s mega-narrative of the sprawling affair:

Authorities say video from a surveillance camera shows the suspects approaching Collier’s car from the rear as he sat in his cruiser. Collier was shot five times, including twice in the head, officials said.

“The suspects.” In a long article about the Tsarnaevs, it is reasonable to conclude that the Globe means the Tsarnaevs.

It is all much more unclear. On April 25, several days before the Globe published the bit above, the New York Times offered a crucial but underplayed distinction:

While there is video of two men approaching Officer Collier’s car, three law enforcement officials said, it does not clearly show their faces. But investigators now believe the brothers killed the officer to get another gun.

The Times reports that the video does not establish with certainty the identity of Collier’s murderers. Yet the next sentence accepts as a certainty that it was the brothers.

Murkier and Murkier

In a story full of weird twists, here’s another: one of the first responders to the scene at MIT was himself later shot in Watertown. In the early accounts, we were told:

One of the first responders to the scene of the officer’s death was police officer Richard Donohue, who had gone through the police academy at the same time as Officer Collier.

A few hours later, he would be critically wounded in the Watertown shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers.

What are the odds? Of all the law enforcement people who could get shot in Watertown, only Donohue was. Unlike Collier, Donohue was a Boston transit policeman—but the two were good friends.

And then, more….We learned later that Donohue was hit not by the Tsarnaevs, but by “friendly fire.” That is, an early witness on the scene of the mysterious shooting of Officer Collier shortly thereafter became himself the victim of a strange shooting— by fellow law enforcement officers.

Donohue survived and, according to the Boston Globe on May 19, is saying nothing about that night because he … can’t:

Officer Richard “Dic” Donohue of the MBTA Transit Police remembers almost nothing of the night he was shot during chaotic gunfire on a normally quiet Watertown street, or of the murder of his close friend, MIT police Officer
Sean Collier, hours before in Cambridge.

An editor at The Globe told me they’d received tremendous grief from police for reporting the fact that Donohue had apparently been shot by fellow officers. This despite the fact that the paper hardly focused on that, initially reporting it in an article where it was almost mentioned in passing.

Nonetheless—or perhaps because of the sensitivity, we’ve seen surprisingly little coverage of this angle by the local and national media.

***

I did end up submitting questions to MIT; I received a short note back that said, in part,

John DiFava is not available to speak with you. But I can give you answers to some of your questions.

John is Director of Facilities Operations and Security and also the Chief of the MIT Police Department.

That was the only answer. The letter continued:

And regarding your question about the night Officer Collier was killed: I would refer you to the Middlesex DA’s office. As with all homicide investigations in Cambridge, that office is heading up the investigation. Like you, we at MIT seek answers to what happened on that night. Those answers will come once the DA’s office has filed charges.

The Middlesex County DA’s office told me they couldn’t talk because….it’s an “ongoing investigation.”

The truth is, in these kinds of situations, the investigators, AKA the prosecution, has an agenda—to get a conviction—and holds just about all the cards.

We don’t know whether the Tsarnaev brothers did kill Collier, although it would be easy to assume they did. Still, we have trouble coming up with an easy motive or a logical reason for them to have been at that place at that time. We wonder about the lack of candor in this matter. As to whether there is another explanation, the reality is that there may always be others who benefit from chaos and fear.

In any case, if the deaths of people like Sean Collier—or the bombing victims–are truly not to be in vain, it will be because open-minded people work to get to the bottom of things, not because those with an agenda exploit their deaths—or countenance a possible cover-up of the facts of the case. A clear investigative role exists outside of law enforcement. We’ll do what we can, and we welcome informed tips and insights.

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/23/off...oston-bombing/

http://lewrockwell.com/orig11/baker-r26.1.html

[Bev]

An investigative reporter has revealed that the image released by the FBI as evidence on one of the suspects of the Boston Marathon bombings was doctored with a computer software such as Photoshop.



The FBI image was put forth as evidence that 19-year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whom the police took into custody on April 19 after a day of intense searching that shut down major parts of Boston, arrived at the scene of the bombing with a backpack but left without it.



Comparing pictures he took of the scene with the photo released by the FBI, reporter Ralph Lopez of The Digital Journal suggests the FBI photo shows clear evidence of being made with Photoshop.



In the April 15 Boston bombings, three people were killed and more than 260 were wounded.



Initial investigations into the bombings showed that the explosive devices used in the bombings were pressure cookers filled with nails, pellets and gunpowder left in a backpack.



In a shootout on April 19, police killed Dzhokhar’s elder brother, Tamerlan, and later that day arrested Dzhokhar who was hidden on a boat in Watertown.



There have been conflicting statements by American officials as to what happened during and after the bombings.



Initially, authorities claimed they had exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar during his arrest and that he had shot himself in the throat in a bungled suicide attempt.



However, later authorities admitted that Dzhokhar was not armed when police took him into custody.



In the image below, Lopez has shown where one brickwork ends and the other begins in a close-up of the scene enlarged by the FBI:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/8/...-large/dz1.jpg



http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/8/...arge/dz2aa.jpg



Here, Lopez has highlighted some irregular brick patterns:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/8/...bricklines.jpg





Using a pattern of two darker bricks spaced two rows apart, Lopez has compared a photo of the scene taken last week with the FBI’s initial photo:













Differences between brick texture and irregularities in brick patterns suggest that the whole head and face area may have been pasted in.

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/306098.html

[Gibson]

Originally Posted by Bev

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/306098.html

Everything around the guy is fuzzy. That's what happens around a moving object when video is compressed into too few bits, or just badly compressed in real time, as the compression software has to ignore some of the details. This is not evidence of photo-shopping.

And he's found the wrong bricks - the red marked bricks are a better match.





It looks like the original photo was taken from slightly higher up, and to the left.

[Bev]

Having looked at your new picture, Gibson, I think you're probably right. The flashing picture makes it much clearer - he does have the wrong markers.

[ThomasVolker]

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan
Tsarnaev sought to join an anti-Israel movement
in the Gaza Strip, but opted instead to join
Chechen rebels in Dagestan because he did not
speak Arabic, a US Congressman told
Washington-based newspaper, The Hill on
Tuesday.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) returned to the US on
Monday from a congressional fact-finding
mission in Russia. The delegation of six US
lawmakers met with the heads of Russia's
security and intelligence community in hopes of
determining why the US failed to stop the April
terror attack despite Russia having warned the FBI
that Tsarnaev was a potential threat.

http://tinyurl.com/BBTJAI

[Dawn Cannon]

The talks started with a meeting between the NATO ministers and their counterpart from Georgia, which contributes some 1,560 troops to the 100,000-strong NATO mission in Afghanistan.

NATO has promised that Georgia could join the alliance someday, when all the conditions for membership are met.

Rasmussen said that a "stable and democratic Georgia" had a future within NATO, on condition that it undertakes the necessary reforms.

He said the alliance expected the Georgian government to respect the rule of law and human rights, and hold free and fair presidential elections later this year.

http://www.rferl.org/content/nato-af.../25008287.html

[Bev]

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was today indicted on 30 counts, including 17 that carry the death penalty, by a federal grand jury for the horrific April 15 attack.

The 19-year-old is charged with killing four people - three who died in the two bomb blasts and an MIT police officer who was shot dead three days later - and 'maiming, burning and wounding scores of others', U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

Other charges include using a weapon of mass destruction, carjacking, engaging in a fierce shootout with police and causing serious injuries to a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer.

The indictment also revealed a chilling confession Tsarnaev allegedly wrote inside a boat where he was found hiding four days after the bombings, reading: 'I don't like killing innocent people.'

But in the message, he justified his actions by adding: 'The US Government is killing our innocent civilians. I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished. We Muslims are one body, you hurt one, you hurt us all. Stop killing our innocent people, we will stop.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...h-penalty.html

[snowglobe]

Can one dead man implicate another in a crime? Apparently so, because that is what US investigators in the case of Tamerlan Tsarnayev are now trying to make us believe. Media have recently reported that alleged Boston bomber Tsarnaev, who was shot dead in police pursuit, has been named by prosecutors as participant in a 2011 triple murder. The evidence of that? The alleged confessions made by another Chechen man, whom FBI agents handily gunned down in his Orlando home during a Boston-linked investigation.
Read more:

http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_10_24/...sarnayev-5289/

[snowglobe]

Trauma surgeon Stephen Ray Odom, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, testified on April 22 that alleged Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev suffered from a “high-powered injury” that resulted in wounds to the middle ear, the skull base, his vertebrae and his pharynx.

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_0...-capture-3652/

watertownshooting2 - YouTube

watertownshooting2 - YouTube

[SUNOFSPARTA]

This is a very old law enforcement "formula".Blame the dead guy,and file the crime away as solved.This was done by the Greeks and Romans thousands of years ago;and apparently it still works very well today.

Cops learned to "extrapolate" from bureaucrats who said they were estimating;except when civilians do this- it's called Lieing.

[snowglobe]

Originally Posted by SUNOFSPARTA

Cops learned to "extrapolate" from bureaucrats who said they were estimating;except when civilians do this- it's called Lieing.

Can I steal this?