Boston Bombing: Sting Operation Gone Wrong?

Thursday 6 June, 2103

Boston Bombing:

Sting Operation Gone Wrong?

Hameed Abdul Karim                      

In the recent past the FBI had carried out quite a few sting operations netting in would be ‘terrorists’ with the guile and ‘open cheque’ resources at its command.

This raises a question. Was the Boston bombing a sting operation that went wrong? A lot of issues that have cropped since the bombing give rise to this speculation.

It is now indisputably established that both the CIA and the FBI were well aware of what Tamerlane Tsarnaev was up to prior to the bombing. The Russians had alerted them well in advance and indeed the FBI had confessed that they had flagged him for a year or so and found the information against him provided by the Russians was not reliable. Tamerlane Tsaranev had been cleared by both the CIA and the FBI!

It is well known that Muslims in the US complain about harassment at many levels. Many are the cases of racial profiling that have been reported. Muslims in the US dread a ‘set up’ so much that the customary Islamic greetings are avoided when answering calls by fellow Muslims. A Catholic in the US army with a Muslim sounding name was harassed no end. To prove that she was not a Muslim 82^nd Airborne Sgt. 1^st Class Naida Hosan inserted ‘Christian’ as a middle name to she was not of the Islamic faith.

If this is the environment for Muslims in the US, why would the CIA and the FBI shelve a case like that of the Tsarnaevs especially when the Russians reported that he had met with Chechen fighters whilst in Russia only a few months prior to the bombing?

Sting operations

In recent months, the FBI had arrested quite a few ‘suspects’ who were allegedly planning ‘terror’ attacks on US soil. In one particular case ‘Islamic terrorists’ were planning to shoot down military aircraft with stinger missiles. In another case FBI had foiled a ‘terror’ attack at a public gathering at which a van loaded with bombs was to explode causing murder and mayhem. It is now confirmed that it was actually the FBI who had planned these attacks just to remain relevant in the grand scheme of things!

Take the case of Mohamed Osman Mohamud. The FBI entrapped him in a sting operation when they gave him a van loaded with dud explosives that he could ‘set off’ at a Christmas service in Portland, Oregon where a large gathering was expected. It is reported that an FBI agent even drove the ‘explosives’ laden van. When the young immature boy dialed a number the FBI had given him to trigger off the blast, nothing happened. At this point he was arrested for being a ‘Muslim’ terrorist.  Assuming he had a grudge against the US, the question that must be asked is ‘would Osman Mohamud have gone ahead with his ‘terrorism’ if the FBI had not co-operated with him?

Another case is that of Dave Williams. Yet another is that of Abedella Ahmad Tounisi, who was arrested in a sting operation only the day after the Boston bombing. He is only 18 years old and one wonders how difficult would it be to influence an uncultivated mind like that of Tounisi by sophisticated mind manipulating experts in the FBI.  When did these grownups start tackling this innocent youth? Probably before he reached 18 at which point they arranged for him to take a flight to Turkey from where he would go to Syria and join an al-Qaida affiliated ‘terror’ outfits to fight on the side of the rebels. He was nabbed at the airport and is now probably facing a jail term of thirty to forty years if not life.

Back in the days when the word law had value and meaning in the land of the free and the brave, such an outrageous act by anybody, much less the FBI would not have a ghost of a chance in court. But today virtually all civil liberties have been taken away and the US looks more like a police state than a democratic one. Come to think of it, in all these cases the FBI would have been hauled before courts for aiding and abetting crimes if not for being accessories before the fact in the ‘good old days’ if ever there was such a period in the US. Just the other day the US Justice Department was nabbed stealing information from the US media giant AP and then went on to justify the crime by claiming they had every right to do what they did! If this had happened in, say a place like Zimbabwe or Iran, there would be talk of further boycotts and sanctions.

Abdella’s father told a media outlet ‘I know a lot of Muslim kids are being set up’. He said his young boy has committed no crime. The mother of the Boston bombers says just about the same thing. She claimed her sons were set up by the FBI as reported on CNN. Anzor Tsarnaev the father of the two alleged bombers says he is certain his sons were framed.

So was the Boston bombing a set up?

Things don’t add up

Initially there were reports that there were four bombs and that two were ‘disabled’. Who planted the two ‘disabled’ bombs? There was a ricin laced letter sent to President Obama reminiscent of the anthrax letters in the wake of 9-11. Is there a militia connection?

Reports of the escape by car by Djokhar Tsarnaev raise more questions. How come he was allowed to drive away at high speed smashing a massive police barricade in the process in a stolen SUV just like that on a lockdown town with no vehicular traffic other than this lone car? There were hundreds of police cars on the scene and also helicopters hovering above and yet there was no chase (like in the movies). Why? Djokhar Tsarnaev was found only in the night the next day in a ‘bullet ridden’ boat and yet he had suffered only a slight injury as pictures of his capture clearly indicate. Was the FBI trying to finish him off as suggested by the bullet riddled boat before the cameras came on to the scene?  

The case gets more curious with Tamerlan Tsarnaevs’ visit to Russia as recently as 2012. How come the Russians who had tipped off the Americans about Tsarnaev let him pass all security check points at the Moscow airport? How come Tsarnaev managed to slip through the notorious Russian security apparatus and then stay for six months in Dagestan which is in rebellion against Russian occupation? How come Tamerlan Tsarnaev managed to keep himself free despite being on the wanted list of the usually thorough and ruthless Russians? Dagestan has the largest foreign troop presence in the world after Kashmir.

The questions that arise are ‘was Tamerlan Tsarnaev under the protection of the CIA and FBI’. Was he travelling on a fake passport?

Were the Tsarnaev brothers patsies under the ‘tutelage’ of the FBI?

Backpack mystery

Adding to the conundrum that was the Boston bombing are the pictures of the backpack the US government decided to release to the public. The bombed out backpack is black in colour and has an emblem of the Craft International mercenaries who comprise ex-US Seals and who for some inexplicable reason happened to be at the scene. What was a sophisticated ‘mercenary’ organisation like Craft International doing at the Boston Marathon?  Be that as it may, pictures of the backpacks Tamerlane Tsarnaev carrying show that it was grey and had thick straps. The bombed out black backpack, which is identical to the ones Craft Int. personnel had on their backs, had narrow straps. The one Djhokar Tsarnaev was wearing was white. There is at least one picture on the net showing the younger Tsarnaev clutching on to the right strap of his backpack as he runs away from the scene after the blast!

All this suggests there is more to the Boston bombing than meets the eye.