Yesterday, April 8, 2015, in a U.S. district court in Boston, after only 12 hours of deliberation, the jury convicted 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on all 30 counts of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013. 17 of the 30 counts carry the death penalty. The same jury will now decide whether to sentence Tsarnaev to death or give him life in prison without possibility of parole.
Tamerlan (l) and Dzhokhar (r) Tsarnaev
Incredibly, Tsarnaev’s defense team didn’t say he was innocent. Instead, the defense admitted he had carried out the bombings, but blamed Dzhokhar’s older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, for having “masterminded” the bombings. Tamerlan Tsarnaev didn’t make it to trial because, we are told, he was gunned down in the evening of April 18, 2015, in a shoot-out with police in Watertown, a suburb of Boston, then run over by his younger brother in a stolen SUV.
I wrote “we are told” because there’s this video showing what appears to be a naked, unwounded and very much alive Tamerlan being handcuffed and escorted into a Boston Police Department vehicle. According to 21stCenturyWireTV that uploaded the video to YouTube on April 20, 2013, the video had appeared on Brazilian TV earlier that day (April 20).
Please make a note of the image of “Tamerlan” with a well-trimmed beard at the 0:17 mark. Here’s a screenshot I took.
There are at least two reasons for us to be skeptical of the culpability of Dzhokhar and his older brother Tamerlan.
Reason #1: FBI video showing tsarnaev setting down a backpack doesn’t exist
Remember this much-publicized image of the Tsarnaev brothers at the marathon?
The image is from an FBI video, and was widely circulated by the media. Note that the Tsarnaevs were not actually depicted as depositing their backpacks that presumably contained the bombs. But just the image of the two was enough to convince us they had been present at the marathon.
The only problem is the FBI video doesn’t exist.
On April 18, 2013, Richard DesLauriers, Special Agent in charge of the Boston Division of the FBI, gave a press conference in which he asked for the public’s help to identify two suspects (who later were identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) for the bombings. DesLauriers said:
After a very detailed analysis of photo, video, and other evidence, we are releasing photos of the two suspects. They are identified as Suspect 1 and Suspect 2. They appear to be associated.
Suspect 1 is wearing a black hat. Suspect 2 is wearing a white hat. [Jurors at Dzhokhar’s trial were told he was the one wearing the white hat.]
Suspect 2 set down a back pack at the site of the second explosion just in front of the Forum Restaurant….
As you can see from one of the images, Suspects 1 and 2 appear to be walking together through the marathon crowd on Boylston Street in the direction of the finish line….
Further, on FBI.gov, we have videos of the suspects. The photos and videos are posted for the public and media to use, review and publicize.
Here’s the video released at the press conference:
Note that although Special Agent DesLauriers clearly said at the press conference that “Suspect 2 set down a back pack at the site of the second explosion,” the actual image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev setting down his back pack was never released to the public, nor does the surveillance video above depict Tsarnaev setting down the back pack.
Why is that?
New York Daily News reports that in a pre-trial hearing on March 2, 2015, Dzhokhar’s defense attorney David Bruck made a “stunning assertion” that a video billed by the FBI as a caught-in-the-act piece of evidence “does not exist.” From the Daily News:
The feds claimed the video, which was never made public, showed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropping a backpack concealing a homemade bomb next to a 6-year-old boy who was killed.
At the time, FBI officials only released still photos of Tsarnaev mingling with finish-line revelers near where little Martin Richard was standing. Other photos made public showed both Tsarnaev brothers walking through the crowd before the explosions carrying backpacks.
So how is it that so many people believe they’ve seen a video that doesn’t exist — a video showing the Tsarnaev brothers dropping a backpack at the marathon? Indeed, on April 21, 2013, I had asked about precisely that video in my post “Where is the video showing the Tsarnaev brothers placing the bombs?”
WhoWhatWhy points out that what we’d seen is merely a TV re-enactment in a National Geographic docu-drama entitled, “Inside the Hunt for the Boston Bombers.” The National Geographic video, however, was not actual footage of the Tsarnaevs, but a re-enactment of the video the FBI claimed to have but never released. To add to the irony, the National Geographic’s reenactment wasn’t even shot in Boston—actors created the scene on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona.
Reason #2: Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s now-you-see-it now-you-don’t beard
As presented by Professor Jim Fetzer for Veterans Today, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a well-trimmed beard when he was seen in a video working out at the Wai Kru gym on April 12, 2013, three days before the Boston Marathon. But FBI images of Tamerlan on April 15 depicted him as clean shaven. Three days later, however, when he was killed in a shoot-out with the police on April 18, Tamerlan again had a well-trimmed beard.
A friend of Tamerlan, Manatov Khairullozhon, said he had dinner with the Tsarnaev brothers at the Somerville Cafe on the evening of April 15, 2013, where he observed Tamerlan was wearing a beard. Khairullozhon went to the authorities when he saw the FBI images of a clean-shaven Tamerlan at the marathon to inform them that he and Tamerlan, sporting a beard, had had dinner the night before, but they did not want to hear it. For coming forth, Khairullozhon has been targeted and abused and is being prosecuted for obstruction of evidence.
↓ Click image below to enlarge ↓
Tamerlan’s now-you-see-it now-you-don’t beard is why his aunt, Maret Tsarnaev, believes the surveillance video and the images of the two brothers at the Boston Marathon are fake.
There are so many questions we can ask Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team:
- Why wasn’t former CIA agent Robert David Steele, who says Boston bombings were a false flag, called as a defense witness?
- Why wasn’t Hollywood producer Nathan Folks, who says Boston bombings were a false flag, called as an expert witness for the defense?
- Why weren’t Boston police witnesses asked why Catholic priests were turned away from ministering to the bombing victims? (Was it because if the priests were allowed, they would discover that the victims were crisis actors?)
- Why didn’t the defense ask a medical expert how is it that Jeff Bauman, who supposedly had both legs blown off by the first Boston Marathon bomb, was fully conscious when he carted away in a wheelchair, when his severe injuries would have knocked him unconscious? Why wasn’t a medical expert asked how Bauman could so quickly recover from losing both legs that he appeared at a Bruins hockey game a mere 19 days later?
H/t 21st Century Wire, WhoWhatWhy, and FOTM’s josephbc69.
For all the posts FOTM has published on this subject, go to our “Boston Marathon Bombings” page.
~Éowyn
