Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

News & Supplemental  

Graham Fuller Helped Start the Iran-Contra Affair

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: We keep learn­ing more and more about the back­ground of the fig­ures emerg­ing into view in con­nec­tion with the Boston marathon bomb­ings.

In our most recent post on the sub­ject, we not­ed the marital/familial rela­tion­ship of the alleged bombers’ “Uncle Tsarni” to Gra­ham E. Fuller, an impor­tant “ex” CIA offi­cer.

In addi­tion to hav­ing been an ear­ly and appar­ent­ly impor­tant advo­cate (archi­tect?) of the U.S. turn to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Fuller has run inter­fer­ence for the Fetul­lah Gulen cult, dis­miss­ing charges by intel­li­gence offi­cers in the Mid­dle East and Cen­tral Asia that the group has links to the CIA.

Now it emerges that Fuller–former CIA sta­tion chief in Kabul–authored a pol­i­cy paper that is said to have been cen­tral to the devel­op­ment of the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal!

“Wash­ing­ton Talk: Brief­ing; C.I.A. Secrets”; The New York Times; 2/15/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . . Mr. Fuller’s name came to pub­lic atten­tion last year when it was dis­closed that he was the author of a ”think piece” cir­cu­lat­ed in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty in May 1985 sug­gest­ing the pos­si­b­li­ty of pur­su­ing open­ings in Iran.

The study was instru­men­tal in per­suad­ing some top-rank­ing Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy mak­ers to begin con­sid­er­ing covert con­tacts with Iran­ian lead­ers. It even­tu­al­ly led to the covert sale of Unit­ed States weapons to Teheran in what became the Iran-con­tra affair. . . .

Discussion

12 comments for “Graham Fuller Helped Start the Iran-Contra Affair”

  1. So three friends of Dzhokhar Tsar­naev were arrest­ed today for dis­pos­ing of Dzhokhar’s lap­tap and a back­pack of fire­works after the attack. They’re not being charged with any involve­ment in the plan­ning of the bomb­ings. It sounds like text mes­sages indi­cate that they real­ized Dzhokhar might be one of the bombers after the FBI released their pic­tures on tv so they decid­ed to get rid of evi­dence at that point because they did­n’t want Dzhokhar to get in trou­ble. Not a great idea:

    CBS/AP/ May 1, 2013, 4:44 PM
    Accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsar­naev’s friends hid damn­ing evi­dence, feds say

    Updat­ed at 4:44 p.m. ET

    BOSTON Three col­lege friends of Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect Dzhokhar Tsar­naev were arrest­ed and accused Wednes­day of remov­ing a back­pack con­tain­ing fire­works emp­tied of gun­pow­der from Tsar­naev’s dorm room three days after the attack to try to keep him from get­ting into trou­ble.

    In court papers, the FBI said one of them threw the back­pack in the garbage — it was lat­er found in a land­fill by law enforce­ment offi­cers — after they con­clud­ed from news reports that Tsar­naev was one of the bombers.

    Aza­mat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyr­bayev were charged with con­spir­ing to obstruct jus­tice by con­ceal­ing and destroy­ing evi­dence. A third man, Robel Philli­pos, was charged with lying to inves­ti­ga­tors about the vis­it to Tsar­naev’s room.

    In a court appear­ance Wednes­day after­noon, Tazhayakov and Kadyr­bayev waived bail and agreed to vol­un­tar­i­ly deten­tion. Their next hear­ing is sched­uled for May 14.

    Philli­pos was ordered held pend­ing a deten­tion and prob­a­ble cause hear­ing sched­uled for Mon­day.

    ...

    Tazhayakov and Kadyr­bayev, who are from Kaza­khstan, have been held in jail for more than a week on alle­ga­tions that they vio­lat­ed their stu­dent visas by not reg­u­lar­ly going to class at UMass. All three men charged Wednes­day began attend­ing UMass with Tsar­naev at the same time in 2011, accord­ing to the FBI.

    The three were not accused of any involve­ment in the bomb­ing itself. But in a foot­note in the court papers, the FBI said that about a month before the bomb­ing, Tsar­naev told Tazhayakov and Kadyr­bayev that he knew how to make a bomb.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors have not said whether the pres­sure cook­er bombs used in the attacks were made with gun­pow­der extract­ed from fire­works.

    If con­vict­ed, Kadyr­bayev and Tazhayakov could get up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Philli­pos faces a max­i­mum of eight years behind bars and a $250,000 fine.

    Author­i­ties allege that on the night of April 18, after the FBI released sur­veil­lance-cam­era pho­tos of the bomb­ing sus­pects and the three men sus­pect­ed their friend was one of them, they went to Tsar­naev’s dorm room.

    Before Tsar­naev’s room­mate let them in, Kadyr­bayev showed Tazhayakov a text mes­sage from Tsar­naev that read: “I’m about to leave if you need some­thing in my room take it,” accord­ing to the FBI.

    When Tazhayakov learned of the mes­sage, “he believed he would nev­er see Tsar­naev alive again,” the FBI said in the affi­davit.

    It was not clear from the court papers whether author­i­ties believe that was an instruc­tion from Tsar­naev to his friends to destroy evi­dence.

    Once inside Tsar­naev’s room, the men noticed a back­pack con­tain­ing fire­works, which had been opened and emp­tied of pow­der, the FBI said.

    The FBI said that Kadyr­bayev knew when he saw the emp­ty fire­works that Tsar­naev was involved in the bomb­ings and decid­ed to remove the back­pack from the room “in order to help his friend Tsar­naev avoid trou­ble.”

    Kadyr­bayev also decid­ed to remove Tsar­naev’s lap­top “because he did not want Tsar­naev’s room­mate to think he was steal­ing or behav­ing sus­pi­cious­ly by just tak­ing the back­pack,” the FBI said in court papers.

    After the three men returned to Kadyr­bayev’s and Tazhayakov’s apart­ment with the back­pack and com­put­er, they watched news reports fea­tur­ing pho­tographs of Tsar­naev.

    The FBI affi­davit said Kadyr­bayev told author­i­ties the three men then “col­lec­tive­ly decid­ed to throw the back­pack and fire­works into the trash because they did not want Tsar­naev to get into trou­ble.”

    Kadyr­bayev said he placed the back­pack and fire­works along with trash from the apart­ment into a large trash bag and threw it into a garbage bin near the men’s apart­ment.

    When the back­pack was lat­er found in a land­fill last week, inside it was a UMass-Dart­mouth home­work assign­ment sheet from a class Tsar­naev was tak­ing, the FBI said.

    Kadyr­bayev and Tazhayakov lived at an off-cam­pus apart­ment in New Bed­ford, about 60 miles south of Boston, and got around in a car reg­is­tered to Kadyr­bayev with a sou­venir plate that read “Ter­ror­ista (hash)1.” The car was pic­tured on Tsar­naev’s Twit­ter feed in March.

    The plate was a gag gift from some of Kadyr­bayev’s friends, meant to invoke his pen­chant for late-night par­ty­ing rather than his polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments, a lawyer for Kadyr­bayev said last week.

    ...

    Anoth­er bit of info on the arrest­ed friends: The one with the “Ter­ror­ista #1” nov­el­ty license plate for his BMW appears to have owned a num­ber of BMW’s dur­ing his time in the US:

    Tsar­naev friends had mon­ey and ‘Ter­ror­ista #1’ license plate, class­mate says

    By Miran­da Leitsinger, Tom Win­ter and Erin McClam, NBC News

    Two of the three peo­ple new­ly arrest­ed in the Boston Marathon inves­ti­ga­tion are Kaza­kh friends of Dzhokhar Tsar­naev, and one drove a BMW with a nov­el­ty license plate that said “Ter­ror­ista #1,” accord­ing to peo­ple who knew them.

    ...

    Both Kaza­kh men are 19 and were in the Unit­ed States on stu­dent visas, the Jus­tice Depart­ment said.

    Stephen Troio, who said he lived on the same dorm floor as the two men dur­ing his fresh­man year in 2011, said that they showed “lack of emo­tion” and “lack of per­son­al­i­ty” and that noth­ing stood out about them but the BMW.

    “They did have a lot of mon­ey,” Troio told NBC News. “He wrecked like three Beam­ers and then bought anoth­er one.”

    Trevor Berry, 20, who took a cal­cu­lus course with Tazhayakov, said the Kaza­kh was friend­ly with Tsar­naev and that the two could be spot­ted din­ing togeth­er on cam­pus. “They were pret­ty close as far as I can tell,” he said.

    Berry said that Tazhayakov was “much more qui­et than Dzhokhar,” but was once “real­ly flus­tered” over a low grade he’d got­ten in cal­cu­lus class.

    The two men were tak­en into cus­tody over immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions last week. Kadyrbayev’s lawyer, Robert Stahl, told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press then that they were hor­ri­fied by the marathon bomb­ing.

    “They can’t even fath­om some­thing like this from a kid who seemed to be a typ­i­cal young col­lege stu­dent,” he said.

    ...

    A neigh­bor in New Bed­ford said Wednes­day that the Kaza­khs were qui­et and polite, and would even help car­ry­ing gro­ceries inside. They had par­ties, the neigh­bor said, includ­ing one that police were called to at 3 a.m.

    ...

    A Face­book page in the name of Aza­mat Tazhayakov lists him as a UMass-Dart­mouth stu­dent and as a mem­ber of the Class of 2011 at a Kaza­kh school, Miras Inter­na­tion­al School Astana. It lists his home­town as Atyrau, says he speaks Russ­ian and lists Rihan­na, Bey­once and Enimem as musi­cians he likes.

    A Face­book page in the name of Dias Kadyr­bayev shows him vaca­tion­ing in Fort Laud­erdale, Fla., and palling around with friends.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 1, 2013, 2:08 pm
  2. Worth not­ing...:

    Report: Moscow spy saga tied to Boston bomb­ing case
    Doug Stan­glin, USATODAY 10:43 a.m. EDT May 15, 2013
    A U.S. diplo­mat was expelled for alleged­ly try­ing to recruit a senior Russ­ian anti-ter­ror­ism offi­cial.

    The U.S. diplo­mat expelled for alleged­ly spy­ing for the CIA was try­ing to recruit a senior Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer involved with fight­ing ter­ror­ism in the North Cau­ca­sus, the region linked to the sus­pects in the Boston bomb­ing case, the Russ­ian news­pa­per Kom­m­er­san report­ed, quot­ing Russ­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vice sources.

    The Russ­ian For­eign Min­istry declared Ryan Fogle, a third sec­re­tary in the U.S. Embassy’s polit­i­cal sec­tion, per­sona non gra­ta on Wednes­day and ordered him to leave the coun­try. He was detained by offi­cers of the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (FSB) Mon­day night.

    Kom­m­er­sant, quot­ing “par­tic­i­pants of the spe­cial oper­a­tion,” said Fogle “was try­ing to recruit an FSB offi­cer in charge of the fight against ter­ror­ism in the North Cau­ca­sus.”

    Russ­ian state tele­vi­sion aired footage Wednes­day from Rus­si­a’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices claim­ing that anoth­er alleged Amer­i­can spy was expelled ear­li­er this year.

    In the footage, a man sit­ting in near dark­ness who was iden­ti­fied only as an FSB oper­a­tive said a “CIA oper­a­tive” was expelled in Jan­u­ary. He said the FSB then asked its U.S. coun­ter­parts to halt this “dis­turb­ing activ­i­ty.”

    The man also claimed the Rus­sians had been shad­ow­ing Fogle since he began his Moscow post­ing in 2011.There was no imme­di­ate way for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press to con­firm that the per­son in the video was indeed an FSB oper­a­tive.

    ...

    Kom­m­er­sant quot­ed the sources as say­ing the Amer­i­cans appar­ent­ly got the phone num­bers of Russ­ian anti-ter­ror­ism offi­cials dur­ing meet­ings about the April 15 Boston bomb­ings.

    ...

    Last year, when Tamer­lan took a six-month trip to the Russ­ian repub­lic of Dages­tan, where he par­ents had once again re-set­tled, Russ­ian offi­cials twice exchanged mes­sages with first the FBI, then the CIA, inquir­ing about Tamer­lan and any pos­si­ble ties to extrem­ists.

    The FBI met with Tamer­lan but deter­mined that he was not a ter­ror threat. The U.S. sought to find out why the Rus­sians were inquir­ing about Tamer­lan, but received no addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion from the Rus­sians, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials.

    Dur­ing his trip to Rus­sia, Tamer­lan spent most of his time in Dages­tan, where his par­ents were liv­ing, and Chech­nya.

    After the bomb­ing, U.S. diplo­mats and FBI agents from Moscow trav­eled to Makhachkala, cap­i­tal of Dages­tan, to inter­view Anzor and Zubei­dat Tsar­naev, the sus­pects’ par­ents. It was not clear from the Kom­m­er­sant report whether Fogle was one of the diplo­mats.

    The news­pa­per report­ed that the Amer­i­can side sought to take advan­tage of their meet­ings with Russ­ian anti-ter­ror­ism forces “to estab­lish per­son­al con­tacts” in an effort to bypass bureau­crat­ic delays that often crop up through nor­mal chan­nels.

    The news­pa­per said Fogle alleged­ly called one senior Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cial — the alleged recruit­ment tar­get — twice on a cell phone “per­sis­tent­ly seek­ing a per­son­al meet­ing.” It was dur­ing a pur­port­ed meet­ing that Fogle was detained.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 15, 2013, 8:54 am
  3. An FBI agent was inter­view­ing one of the Chenchen mixed mar­tial arts fight­ers that Tamer­lan trained with. It did­n’t end well:

    WESH.com

    Orlan­do man killed by FBI had ties to Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect, NBC News con­firms
    Man knew Boston bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, friend says

    UPDATED 10:07 AM EDT May 22, 2013

    ORLANDO, Fla. —An FBI agent shot and killed a man overnight in Orlan­do who had ties to one of the sus­pects in the Boston Marathon bomb­ings, NBC News has con­firmed.

    Accord­ing to NBC News, a spe­cial agent was inter­view­ing the sus­pect regard­ing his con­nec­tions to bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev and oth­er extrem­ists. The sus­pect, iden­ti­fied by the FBI as Ibrag­im Toda­shev, was orig­i­nal­ly coop­er­a­tive, but he was shot after attack­ing the agent, NBC News report­ed.

    A friend of Toda­shev, Khusn Taramiv, said Toda­shev, 27, was being inves­ti­gat­ed as part of the Boston bomb­ings and knew Tsar­naev because both were MMA fight­ers.

    Taramiv claims he and Toda­shev were inter­viewed by the FBI for near­ly three hours on Tues­day.

    “(The FBI) took me and my friend, (Ibrag­im Toda­shev). They were talk­ing to us, both of us, right? And they said they need him for a lit­tle more, for a cou­ple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They nev­er brought him back,” Taramiv said.

    “He felt inside he was going to get shot,” Taramiv said about Toda­shev. “I told him, ‘Every­thing is going to be fine, don’t wor­ry about it.’ He said, ‘I have a real­ly bad feel­ing.’ ”

    Taramiv said he left the inter­view, and when he came back to the apart­ments, he found that there had been a shoot­ing.

    “I was com­plete­ly shocked. I still can’t believe it, you know what I mean?” he said.

    Taramiv said Toda­shev gave him his par­ents’ phone num­ber in case he got arrest­ed.

    The shoot­ing hap­pened at the Wind­hover Con­do­mini­ums on Kirk­man Road near Con­roy Road.

    The FBI said it will send a post-shoot­ing inci­dent review team from Wash­ing­ton and will arrive in Orlan­do on Wednes­day or Thurs­day.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 22, 2013, 6:38 am
  4. A cou­ple more bits of info have trick­led in on the shoot­ing of Ibrag­im Toda­shev. First, it appears that he was shot in the head:

    Gawk­er
    FBI Says Ibrag­im Toda­shev Was About to Sign a Con­fes­sion

    FBI
    Max Rivlin-Nadler Today 7:45am

    Ibrag­im Toda­shev, the first play­er in Wednes­day’s strange day of ter­ror­ism and then racism (ahead of Oba­ma’s big talk on ter­ror­ism today) was appar­ent­ly about to sign a con­fes­sion to the 2011 triple mur­der in Mass­a­chu­setts when he “just went crazy.”

    One FBI agent received minor abra­sions from the knife attack, which was stopped when Toda­shev was shot in the head. The FBI is say­ing this was only moments before Toda­shev was going to sign a con­fes­sion that would have impli­cat­ed both him and sus­pect­ed Boston Marathon bomber Tamer­lan Tsar­naev in the 2011 triple homi­cide.

    Reniya Manukyan, the estranged wife of Toda­shev, said her hus­band “had noth­ing to hide” and was coop­er­at­ing ful­ly with the FBI over the course of sev­er­al weeks as they repeat­ed­ly inter­viewed him.

    ...

    “The agent, two Mass­achusetts State Police troop­ers, and oth­er law enforce­ment per­son­nel were inter­view­ing (Toda­shev) ... when a vio­lent con­fronta­tion was ini­ti­at­ed by the indi­vid­ual,” the FBI said after the attack. “... The indi­vid­ual was killed and the agent sus­tained non-life threat­en­ing ?injuries.”

    The FBI has sent a team of inves­ti­ga­tors to look into the fatal shoot­ing. The inves­ti­ga­tors will look into just how a man who was being inter­viewed for sev­er­al hours came to pos­sess a knife, and why, even with sev­er­al offi­cers (and oth­er uniden­ti­fied law enforce­ment per­son­nel) in the room with a sus­pect­ed mur­der­er with ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions, lethal force was used to stop a knife attack.

    There was also a report out yes­ter­day sug­gest­ing that inves­ti­ga­tors were retract­ing the asser­tion that he attacked with a knife at all. So the inves­ti­ga­tion into why lethal force was used against a man with a knife could get com­pli­cat­ed:

    Man Shot by FBI Had Ties to Boston Bomb­ing Sus­pect

    By KYLE HIGHTOWER Asso­ci­at­ed Press
    ORLANDO, Fla. May 23, 2013 (AP)

    A Chechen immi­grant shot to death in Flori­da after an alter­ca­tion with an FBI agent impli­cat­ed him­self in a triple slay­ing that offi­cials believe may have been con­nect­ed to Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, author­i­ties said.

    Ibrag­im Toda­shev’s Chechen roots and mixed mar­tial arts back­ground mir­ror that of Tsar­naev, the 26-year-old Boston bomb­ing sus­pect killed in a shootout with police days after the April 15 ter­ror­ist attack. The two also had lived in the Boston area.

    Toda­shev, a 27-year-old mixed mar­tial arts fight­er, was fatal­ly shot ear­ly Wednes­day at his Orlan­do home dur­ing a meet­ing with the agent and two Mass­a­chu­setts state troop­ers, author­i­ties said. The agent was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal with injuries that were not life-threat­en­ing.

    Three law enforce­ment offi­cials, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said ini­tial­ly that Toda­shev had lunged at the FBI agent with a knife. How­ev­er, two of those offi­cials said lat­er in the day it was no longer clear what had hap­pened. The third offi­cial had not received any new infor­ma­tion.

    ...

    Yep.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 23, 2013, 6:48 am
  5. The father of Ibrag­im Toda­shev is report­ed­ly close to Chechen pres­i­dent Ramzan Kady­rov, the for­mer rebel leader turned pro-Krem­lin anti-Wah­habist Islamist strong­man. So Tamer­lan’s part­ner in the triple mur­ders appar­ent­ly involved the son of a man close to the for­mer rebel leader/current present of Chech­nya. At this point I guess this all should­n’t be sur­pris­ing giv­en the twists and turns in this case, but it still sort of is:

    Father of Chechen shot by FBI sus­pects son was tor­tured

    GROZNY, Rus­sia | Thu May 23, 2013 2:56pm EDT

    (Reuters) — The father of a Chechen immi­grant killed dur­ing ques­tion­ing over his links with one of the Boston Marathon bomb­ings sus­pects said on Thurs­day he plans to trav­el to the Unit­ed States where he sus­pects his son was tor­tured and killed.

    Ibrag­im Toda­shev, 27, was killed by a fed­er­al agent in his apart­ment com­plex when he became vio­lent dur­ing ques­tion­ing over his ties to Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, the old­er of two broth­ers sus­pect­ed of plant­i­ng two bombs at the marathon on April 15.

    “I sus­pect that they tor­tured my son and that he suf­fered a painful death,” said Abdul­ba­ki Toda­shev, wip­ing away tears at the home he shares with one of his wives in the most­ly Mus­lim region of Chech­nya in Rus­si­a’s North Cau­ca­sus.

    “I will try to go to (the Unit­ed States) and get to the truth,” he said as he received neigh­bors and acquain­tances pay­ing their respects to the dead man, the old­est of 12 chil­dren between his father’s two wives.

    Toda­shev had met the Tsar­naevs when he trav­elled to the Unit­ed States to improve his Eng­lish, said his father, who works in the may­or’s office in Chech­nya’s main city of Grozny and is said to be on close terms with region­al leader Ramzan Kady­rov.

    He said he gave his per­mis­sion when his son asked to stay in the Unit­ed States because he said it was safer than Chech­nya, where sep­a­ratists waged two wars with Rus­sia after the fall of the Sovi­et Union and mil­i­tants still fight for an Islam­ic state.

    Toda­shev trav­elled to the Unit­ed States in 2008 on a Russ­ian pass­port, a fed­er­al law enforce­ment source said, and lived in Boston before mov­ing to Flori­da, where he was killed. His father said he had a plane tick­et to return to Rus­sia on Fri­day.

    “He should­n’t have left. He lived com­fort­ably and his moth­er was very wor­ried about him because he was the old­est in the fam­i­ly and she was used to him being a mod­el for the oth­ers,” said a neigh­bor, Mali­ka, who refused to give her last name.

    The FBI agent who shot Toda­shev, who also prac­ticed mixed mar­tial arts, has not been pub­licly iden­ti­fied but is from the agen­cy’s Boston divi­sion, the Orlan­do Sen­tinel report­ed.

    U.S. media report­ed that Toda­shev impli­cat­ed him­self and Tamer­lan Tsar­naev in an unsolved 2011 triple homi­cide in a Boston sub­urb that inves­ti­ga­tors believe was drug relat­ed. Author­i­ties were inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble con­nec­tions between Tsar­naev and the crime.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 23, 2013, 12:09 pm
  6. Deep in this arti­cle is a damned good expla­na­tion of (part­ly) why rad­i­cal Repub­li­cans are court­ing rad­i­cal Islam.

    Most of the sto­ry details how the Tsar­naev fam­i­ly was trau­ma­tized by war and relo­ca­tion, and eludes to med­dling by The Jamestown Foun­da­tion and oth­er U.S. NGO’s.

    The entire arti­cle requires a sub­scrip­tion, but I will post the entire text if request­ed.

    The impor­tant part of this excerpt is about Gra­ham Fuller and rad­i­cal free-mar­ket pol­i­tics:

    https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/chechnyan-power/efb0aacac87b007ee9ddf378092e40af1cdff786/

    Chech­nyan Pow­er
    By Mark Ames

    (excerpt)

    “Uncle Rus­lan rep­re­sent­ed the pos­i­tive side of the Amer­i­can Dream for the Tsar­naev extend­ed clan. Uncle Rus­lan had a knack for mak­ing all the right choic­es; Anzor, not so much.

    In 1995, the same year Anzor Tsar­naev fled Chech­nya with his fam­i­ly and returned to Kyr­gyzs­tan, his younger broth­er Rus­lan was work­ing as a con­sul­tant for Arthur Ander­son on a USAID con­tract to devel­op cap­i­tal mar­kets struc­tures in Kaza­khstan, whose huge untapped oil reserves were the source of an unde­clared pipeline war that I wrote about in my last series of arti­cles. In the late 1990s, Uncle Rus­lan joined the Kaza­kh office of Amer­i­can law firm Salans Hertzfeld, where he ser­viced multi­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies tap­ping into Kazakhstan’s rich oil, gas and min­er­al resources.

    Uncle Rus­lan mar­ried into geopo­lit­i­cal roy­al­ty — Susan Fuller, the daugh­ter of one of the most pow­er­ful CIA Cold War fig­ures, Gra­ham Fuller. Tamer­lan and Dzhokhar’s father, on the hand, mar­ried a crazy Avar from Dages­tan — at least, that’s how Uncle Rus­lan put it in no uncer­tain terms, and with some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, accord­ing to peo­ple whom I’ve spo­ken to who knew Zubei­dat Tsar­nae­va, and accord­ing to numer­ous oth­er reports.

    ***Uncle Ruslan’s father-in-law, Gra­ham Fuller, had been forced into retire­ment from the CIA in the late 1980s over his role in the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal. Although nev­er con­vict­ed of a crime, Gra­ham Fuller has been named as the archi­tect of the pol­i­cy ratio­nale used to jus­ti­fy the Iran-Con­tra oper­a­tion, under which US arms were ille­gal­ly sold to Aya­tol­lah Khomeini’s armed forces. Prof­its from those ille­gal arms sales were used to make ille­gal arms pur­chas­es for the CIA-backed Con­tra forces fight­ing in Nicaragua.

    At Har­vard, Gra­ham Fuller stud­ied under Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki, chair­man of the Amer­i­can Com­mit­tee for Peace in Chech­nya. In 1978, when Brzezin­s­ki was Jim­my Carter’s token Cold War hawk in the White House, Gra­ham Fuller served as CIA sta­tion chief in Kab­ul, where Brzezin­s­ki hatched his now-famous plot to sow chaos in Afghanistan and draw in a cost­ly Sovi­et inva­sion.

    Fuller lat­er explained:

    “I was inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing the soft under­bel­ly of the Sovi­et Union, which is why I want­ed to serve in Afghanistan.”
    The 1978 coup in Afghanistan, Fuller’s last year in Kab­ul, sparked a series of vio­lent back­lash­es and pow­er-strug­gles that even­tu­al­ly drew in the hoped-for Sovi­et inva­sion in late 1979.

    Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ent­ly believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­i­ca and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller.

    Accord­ing to jour­nal­ist Robert Drey­fuss’ book “Devil’s Game,” Fuller explained his attrac­tion to rad­i­cal Islam in neoliberal/libertarian terms:

    “There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,” he wrote. “Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­o­ry envis­ages the role of the state as lim­it­ed to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­ful­ly object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.”
    Some peo­ple who have come across the incred­i­ble coin­ci­dence of all these high-pow­ered CIA names and the Chechen Tsar­naevs as proof of some sort of Mason­ic con­spir­a­cy. Most jour­nal­ists are already freaked out enough by the sim­plest details of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing and the FBI mur­der of Ibrag­im Toda­shev dur­ing his inter­ro­ga­tion. They don’t want to go any­where near this.

    As I’ve argued already, I think there’s a far sim­pler and more obvi­ous expla­na­tion for this: Chech­nya is a small land, its peo­ple num­ber just over a mil­lion. In the Unit­ed States, there are only a few hun­dred Chechen polit­i­cal refugees, maybe a few thou­sand immi­grants at most. Yet the region they come from has been, since the end of the Cold War, the real ground zero of a major geopo­lit­i­cal and ener­gy resource bat­tle between the West, Rus­sia and the Gulf King­doms. By the law of aver­ages, in a world as small and impor­tant as Chechen sep­a­ratism and Caspi­an oil, coin­ci­dences like this are made far more like­ly than most peo­ple under­stand.”

    Posted by Swamp | June 14, 2013, 6:41 am
  7. What hap­pens in Flori­da stays in Flori­da:

    Boston Globe
    Fla. offi­cials won’t inves­ti­gate Toda­shev death
    By Maria Sac­chet­ti
    | Globe Staff

    July 31, 2013

    Florida’s law enforce­ment com­mis­sion­er has refused to inves­ti­gate the fatal shoot­ing of a Chechen man in Orlan­do by a Boston FBI agent, days after the top pros­e­cu­tor in Mass­a­chu­setts also declined to look into the case.

    ...

    “If Mass­a­chu­setts state offi­cials have the author­i­ty to send law enforce­ment offi­cers out of state to inves­ti­gate crimes, then it’s unclear why state offi­cials wouldn’t have the author­i­ty to inves­ti­gate what those offi­cers do,” said Car­ol Rose, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the ACLU of Mass­a­chu­setts. “After all, the gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ple of this state isn’t ‘what hap­pens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’?”

    Howard Simon, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the ACLU of Flori­da, said Bailey’s refusal to inves­ti­gate makes it like­ly that Todashev’s fam­i­ly will have to file a law­suit to find out how he died.

    “It is extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ing, giv­en the incom­pat­i­ble and incon­sis­tent expla­na­tions com­ing from the FBI, that the Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment would defer to them, allow­ing the only inves­ti­ga­tion to be the FBI inves­ti­gat­ing itself,” Simon said. “A per­son was killed at the hands of law enforce­ment in Flori­da, and our state’s gov­ern­ment has cho­sen to evade their respon­si­bil­i­ty to explain to the peo­ple of Flori­da how that hap­pened.”

    Todashev’s fam­i­ly and friends and the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions have also called for an inde­pen­dent inquiry into his death. The coun­cil has urged the Depart­ment of Justice’s Civ­il Rights Divi­sion to inves­ti­gate, say­ing in a let­ter to the depart­ment in June: “It seems unlike­ly that the agents were jus­ti­fied in using dead­ly force against a sin­gle unarmed sus­pect.”

    Shoot­ings by FBI agents are typ­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gat­ed only by the FBI with the Jus­tice Depart­ment, but inde­pen­dent inquiries are not unprece­dent­ed. The Michi­gan attor­ney gen­er­al and the Dear­born police con­duct­ed their own inves­ti­ga­tions into the 2009 shoot­ing of a Detroit imam by the FBI. Both inquiries found no evi­dence of wrong­do­ing by the agents.

    In con­trast to past shoot­ings involv­ing FBI agents, how­ev­er, the FBI has refused to divulge details of the Toda­shev case over the past two months.

    Instead, con­flict­ing reports about what led the agent to shoot Toda­shev have emerged in news reports. Some said that Toda­shev was armed with a blade. Anoth­er said he was unarmed. Still anoth­er said that Toda­shev attacked the agent with a pole or a broom­stick.

    Toda­shev was alleged­ly about to sign a con­fes­sion impli­cat­ing Tsar­naev and him in a 2011 triple slay­ing in Waltham, accord­ing to news reports. Tsar­naev, 26, died after a police shootout days after the Marathon bomb­ings. His broth­er, Dzhokhar, is fac­ing fed­er­al charges in the explo­sions.

    In addi­tion to its refusal to pro­vide details on the Toda­shev case, the FBI has also barred the med­ical exam­in­er from reveal­ing the cause of death.

    Immi­gra­tion offi­cials have also detained Todashev’s for­mer room­mate and a poten­tial wit­ness, Tatiana Gruzde­va, for immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions since May 16. At a hear­ing lat­er that month that was not dis­closed to the pub­lic, a fed­er­al immi­gra­tion judge ordered the 19-year-old Gruzde­va to return to Rus­sia by July 1 and ordered her to remain jailed until she left. US Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, a Home­land Secu­ri­ty agency, lat­er extend­ed her stay 30 days.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 1, 2013, 7:18 am
  8. Uh...:

    The New York Times
    F.B.I. Said to Con­clude It Could Not Have Avert­ed Boston Attack
    By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
    Pub­lished: August 1, 2013

    WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. has con­clud­ed that there was lit­tle its agents could have done to pre­vent the Boston Marathon bomb­ings, accord­ing to law enforce­ment offi­cials, reject­ing crit­i­cism that it could have bet­ter mon­i­tored one of the sus­pects before the attack.

    That con­clu­sion is based on sev­er­al inter­nal reviews that exam­ined how the bureau han­dled a request from a Russ­ian intel­li­gence agency in 2011 to inves­ti­gate whether one of the sus­pects, Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, had been rad­i­cal­ized dur­ing his time in the Unit­ed States.

    ...

    F.B.I. offi­cials often review how the bureau has han­dled inves­ti­ga­tions after attacks, and they have some­times acknowl­edged mis­takes.

    After the 2009 Fort Hood shoot­ing, which left 13 peo­ple dead, the crit­i­cism of the F.B.I. was far more point­ed. The F.B.I. appoint­ed one of its for­mer direc­tors, William H. Web­ster, to con­duct a for­mal review into how the bureau han­dled its inves­ti­ga­tion of the gun­man before and after the attack.

    That review, which found that the bureau had made mis­takes in han­dling intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion, result­ed in rec­om­men­da­tions for changes that the F.B.I. could make to its infor­ma­tion shar­ing and train­ing.

    In the Boston case, the F.B.I. has no plans to appoint an inves­ti­ga­tor to exam­ine its pro­ce­dures. But inspec­tors gen­er­al from four fed­er­al agen­cies, includ­ing the Jus­tice Depart­ment, said that they would be work­ing togeth­er on their own inves­ti­ga­tion into how the gov­ern­ment han­dled intel­li­gence before the attack. The F.B.I. has been coop­er­at­ing with the inspec­tor gen­er­als by giv­ing them inves­tiga­tive files and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­view agents.

    A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to com­ment, cit­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion by the inspec­tors gen­er­al.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 1, 2013, 12:43 pm
  9. Shock­ing:

    5 August 2013 Last updat­ed at 00:21 ET
    Tamer­lan Tsar­naev had right-wing extrem­ist lit­er­a­ture
    By Hilary Ander­s­son BBC News, Wash­ing­ton

    One of the broth­ers sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing out the Boston bomb­ings was in pos­ses­sion of right-wing Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture in the run-up to the attack, BBC Panora­ma has learnt.

    Tamer­lan Tsar­naev sub­scribed to pub­li­ca­tions espous­ing white suprema­cy and gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    He also had read­ing mate­r­i­al on mass killings.

    Until now the Tsar­naev broth­ers were wide­ly per­ceived as just self-styled rad­i­cal jihadists.

    Panora­ma has spent months speak­ing exclu­sive­ly with friends of the bombers to try to under­stand the roots of their rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion.

    ‘Gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies’

    The pro­gramme dis­cov­ered that Tamer­lan Tsar­naev pos­sessed arti­cles which argued that both 9/11 and the 1995 Okla­homa City bomb­ing were gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies.

    Anoth­er in his pos­ses­sion was about “the rape of our gun rights”.

    Read­ing mate­r­i­al he had about white suprema­cy com­ment­ed that “Hitler had a point”.

    Tamer­lan Tsar­naev also had lit­er­a­ture which explored what moti­vat­ed mass killings and not­ed how the per­pe­tra­tors mur­dered and maimed calm­ly.

    There was also mate­r­i­al about US drones killing civil­ians, and about the plight of those still impris­oned in Guan­tanamo Bay.

    ‘A Mus­lim of con­ve­nience’

    The Tsar­naev broth­ers, eth­nic Chechens, spent their ear­ly years mov­ing around a trou­bled region of Rus­sia torn by a vio­lent Islam­ic insur­gency.

    But for the last decade they lived in Cam­bridge, near Boston.

    The broth­ers’ friends told us Tamer­lan turned against the coun­try and became pas­sion­ate about Islam after becom­ing frus­trat­ed when his box­ing career fal­tered because he did not have Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship.

    Their friends would­n’t all speak open­ly because they were afraid of being wrong­ly viewed as asso­ci­at­ed with ter­ror­ism.

    ‘Mike’ spent a lot of time in the broth­ers’ flat.

    “He (Tamer­lan) just did­n’t like Amer­i­ca. He felt like Amer­i­ca was just basi­cal­ly attack­ing all Mid­dle East­ern countries…you know try­ing to take their oil.”

    A spokesper­son for Tamer­lan’s mosque in Cam­bridge, Nicole Mossalam, said Tamer­lan only prayed there occa­sion­al­ly. She por­trayed him as an angry young man who latched onto Islam.

    “As far con­nect­ing with the Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty here, to actu­al­ly pray­ing, being involved, doing acts of charity….all of those were pret­ty much lack­ing.

    “I would say he was just a Mus­lim of con­ve­nience,” she said.

    Dzhokhar Tsar­naev, Tamer­lan’s younger broth­er who has been charged with the bomb­ings, scrawled a note short­ly before his cap­ture stat­ing “We Mus­lims are one body. You hurt one you hurt us all.”

    The broth­ers had been read­ing mil­i­tant Islam­ic web­sites before the bomb­ings.

    Friends say the younger broth­er smoked copi­ous amounts of pot and rarely prayed.

    ‘Tito’ told us Dzhokhar’s old­er broth­er dom­i­nat­ed him and did­n’t approve of his “par­ty lifestyle”.

    “He (Dzhokhar) was intim­i­dat­ed, that would prob­a­bly be the best word. He took him very seri­ous­ly. He was an author­i­ty.”

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 5, 2013, 6:43 am
  10. @Pterrafractyl–

    Not only does this not sur­prise me, but I would have bet that such a con­nec­tion existed–IF I were a gam­bler.

    4/15/2013–Tax day and Patri­ot’s Day, a Mass­a­chu­setts state hol­i­day.

    Islamists and neo-Nazis have car­ried on the tra­di­tion of Nazi/Islamist col­lab­o­ra­tion dat­ing back to the days of the Grand Mufti.

    Keep up the great work!

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | August 5, 2013, 4:30 pm
  11. And now we have a new “Misha”-like fig­ure in Tamer­lan’s life: an elder­ly dis­abled man, Don­ald Lark­ing, that hired the fam­i­ly for day to day help in 2010. Lark­ing was report­ed­ly a fan of pub­li­ca­tions like the Amer­i­can Free Press. Tamer­lan and Lark­ing became quite close, with Tamer­lan fre­quent­ly tak­ing Mr. Lark­ing to the Cam­bridge mosque ‘to get of the house’. Note that Tamer­lan report­ed­ly already met Misha and devel­oped an inter­est on obtain­ing a copy of the Prot­cols of the Elders of Zion back in 2008/2009, so Tamer­lan’s expe­ri­ence with Mr. Lark­ing would have built on that pri­or inter­est in far-right thought.

    The Wall Street Jour­nal
    Updat­ed August 6, 2013, 7:25 a.m. ET

    Boston Bomb­ing Sus­pect Was Steeped in Con­spir­a­cies
    Extrem­ist Pub­li­ca­tions Found at Tamer­lan Tsar­naev’s Home Go Beyond Rad­i­cal Islam
    By ALAN CULLISON

    BOSTON—Extremist U.S. news­pa­pers and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions found in the apart­ment of Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect Tamer­lan Tsar­naev reveal a broad inter­est in far-flung con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, well beyond the Islamist rad­i­cal­ism author­i­ties allege moti­vat­ed the attack.

    Mr. Tsar­naev dis­cov­ered some of the rad­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions by chance. He had worked car­ing for a 67-year-old man who passed on the news­pa­pers and his fringe beliefs long before Mr. Tsar­naev and his broth­er alleged­ly set off explo­sives that killed three peo­ple and injured hun­dreds more.

    Tamer­lan Tsar­naev was 26 years old when he died on April 19 in a fire­fight with police. His 19-year-old broth­er, Dzhokhar Tsar­naev, has plead­ed not guilty to fed­er­al charges. The broth­ers are also sus­pect­ed of killing a police offi­cer.

    The pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed con­nec­tion between Mr. Tsar­naev and the elder­ly man adds a new com­plex­i­ty to a case that author­i­ties have described as home­grown ter­ror­ism. Although inves­ti­ga­tors say the immi­grant broth­ers built their bombs with the help of an al Qae­da online mag­a­zine, the lives of the two men had become large­ly Amer­i­can­ized.

    Mr. Tsar­naev’s moth­er, Zubei­dat Tsar­naev, had tried to make ends meet for her fam­i­ly by work­ing as a home health aide after the fam­i­ly arrived in the U.S. in 2003. One of her clients in 2010 was Don­ald Lark­ing of New­ton, Mass., who was dis­abled after he was shot in the face near­ly 40 years ago in the rob­bery of a con­ve­nience store where he worked.

    Mr. Lark­ing mirac­u­lous­ly sur­vived, but peo­ple close to the fam­i­ly said his fac­ul­ties did­n’t. He was intrigued with far-flung con­spir­a­cies, they said. He sub­scribed to news­pa­pers and jour­nals that doubt­ed the Holo­caust and described the attacks of Sept. 11, Okla­homa City and the New­town school as plots by unseen elites, and the U.S. and Israeli gov­ern­ments.

    Mr. Lark­ing could­n’t be inter­viewed, said his lawyer, Jason Rosen­berg. The shoot­ing dam­aged the exec­u­tive func­tion area of Mr. Lark­ing’s brain, he said, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for his client to make deci­sions and impair­ing “his aware­ness of the real­i­ties of the world.”

    Ms. Tsar­naev began ask­ing Tamer­lan Tsar­naev or his broth­er to care for Mr. Lark­ing when she was­n’t avail­able to work. Mr. Lark­ing’s wife, Rose­mary, a quad­ri­pleg­ic, also need­ed help at home. Mr. Tsar­naev seemed to have found a kin­dred spir­it in Mr. Lark­ing. They became friends and had ani­mat­ed talks about pol­i­tics, peo­ple close to the Lark­ing fam­i­ly said.

    Mr. Lark­ing also gave him his read­ings, they said. A Wall Street Jour­nal reporter recent­ly vis­it­ed Mr. Tsar­naev’s apart­ment in Cam­bridge, Mass. and read a stack of news­pa­pers, most­ly bor­rowed from Mr. Lark­ing, that allege nefar­i­ous con­spir­a­cies.

    The papers includ­ed The First Free­dom, an Alaba­ma-based news­pa­per that espous­es “equal rights for whites” and whose web­sites fea­tures a Con­fed­er­ate flag. Anoth­er was The Sov­er­eign, a New York-based pub­li­ca­tion that alleges the U.S. is under the sway of Israeli lob­by­ists, and that Israel and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty were “deeply involved” in the Boston bomb­ings. Nei­ther paper returned requests for com­ment.

    Mr. Tsar­naev got his own sub­scrip­tion to Amer­i­can Free Press, a paper that the South­ern Law Pover­ty Cen­ter said pro­motes anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. A spokes­woman for the paper denied it had such an agen­da, say­ing the paper pub­lish­es “news that the estab­lished media won’t.” She con­firmed that some­one bought Mr. Tsar­naev a “get acquaint­ed” 16-week sub­scrip­tion in Decem­ber. It expired in April, at about the time of the Boston Marathon attack.

    Gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tors say Islamist rad­i­cal­ism was Mr. Tsar­naev’s motive in plant­i­ng explo­sives near the fin­ish line of the race. He fre­quent­ed jiha­di web­sites, author­i­ties said, and he and his broth­er built their pres­sure-cook­er bombs with the help of al Qaeda’s online mag­a­zine Inspire, which pub­lished an arti­cle titled “How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

    “They were jiha­di auto­di­dacts and no one per­son shaped all their think­ing,” said Bruce Hoff­man, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Stud­ies at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. “Their read­ings are going to be a lot more eclec­tic than some­one sit­ting with like-mind­ed ter­ror­ists at a camp some­where.”

    The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion declined to com­ment for this arti­cle.

    Ter­ror experts said extrem­ist U.S. lit­er­a­ture and Islamist read­ings may reach vast­ly dif­fer­ent audi­ences but the themes are large­ly the same. Both sug­gest wide-rang­ing plots by the U.S. and Israeli gov­ern­ments; that time is run­ning out before an intend­ed apoc­a­lypse, and heroes must act before it is too late.

    Mary Ellen O’Toole, a for­mer pro­fil­er for the FBI, said she doubt­ed that Mr. Tsar­naev’s extrem­ist Amer­i­can read­ings would have formed his opin­ions but they could have reaf­firmed them.

    ...

    His for­mer broth­er-in-law, Elmzi­ra Khozhugov, said Mr. Tsar­naev in 2008 was seek­ing out a copy of the Pro­to­cols. That year he took a sharp turn toward Islam, drop­ping his box­ing career and telling friends and fam­i­ly that it was un-Islam­ic to punch any­one in the face, fam­i­ly and friends said.

    Mr. Khozhugov recalled how that year Mr. Tsar­naev vis­it­ed him at col­lege in Wash­ing­ton state and they spent a week togeth­er. They watched the movie “Zeit­geist,” which called the Sept. 11 attacks a plot of pow­er-hun­gry elites against the U.S.

    Mr. Tsar­naev was inter­est­ed in the so-called tech­no-utopi­an Zeit­geist move­ment, whose adher­ents believe in the com­ing col­lapse of mon­ey-based soci­ety and the advan­tages of an econ­o­my man­aged by com­put­ers inca­pable of cor­rup­tion.

    “He was fas­ci­nat­ed with it, he was begin­ning to think that all sorts of things were con­nect­ed by a con­spir­a­cy of some kind,” Mr. Khozhugov said. “If you had a con­ver­sa­tion with him, you’d get a feel­ing that he was still search­ing, and I’d get the idea that he was going in the wrong direc­tion.”

    Mr. Tsar­naev’s uncle, Rus­lan Tsarni, said his nephew’s per­son­al set­backs may have also played a role in his turn to reli­gion and con­spir­a­cies. Mr. Tsar­naev had few prospects aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly or pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Before the bomb­ing, he was a stay-at-home father.

    The Lark­ings’ lawyer, Mr. Rosen­berg, said the Tsar­naev fam­i­ly grew close to the cou­ple. The father, Anzor, often came to work with his wife and told the Lark­ings, ” ‘If you ever have trou­ble with any­body, let me know and I’ll kill him. We Mus­lims don’t fool around,’ ” Mr. Rosen­berg said.

    Reached by phone in the Russ­ian province of Dages­tan, the elder Mr. Tsar­naev denied he ever use the word “kill” but said he reas­sured Rose­mary Lark­ing that he would defend the cou­ple “if any­one gave them any prob­lems.”

    Anzor Tsar­naev said his son and Mr. Lark­ing became close because the younger man was raised to respect elder­ly peo­ple.

    “That’s the way he was taught, to take care of old peo­ple, the weak ones, for every­one,” said Mr. Tsar­naev, who insist­ed his sons were inno­cent and framed by a “crim­i­nal group.”

    Tamer­lan Tsar­naev also began tak­ing Mr. Lark­ing to the mosque in Cam­bridge, where wor­shipers noticed Mr. Tsar­naev gin­ger­ly escort­ing the old­er man. Mr. Lark­ing told wor­shipers at the mosque that Mr. Tsar­naev was his “close friend,” said Nicole Mossalam, a spokes­woman for the mosque.

    Mr. Rosen­berg said Mr. Lark­ing made fre­quent vis­its to the mosque as a way to “get away from the house.” He said he was able to say things to Mr. Tsar­naev with­out being told they were “wrong or untrue.”

    After the marathon bomb­ing, Mr. Rosen­berg said, Mr. Lark­ing rec­og­nized the two broth­ers in pho­tos cir­cu­lat­ed by the FBI. Mr. Lark­ing imme­di­ate­ly had a health aide call author­i­ties and iden­ti­fy them.

    Mr. Lark­ing has since “sunken into depres­sion and anger,” Mr. Rosen­berg said. Mr. Lark­ing con­tin­ues to attend the Cam­bridge mosque and believes Mr. Tsar­naev was the vic­tim of a con­spir­a­cy, Mr. Rosen­berg said.

    Mr. Lark­ing is “in com­plete denial about what hap­pened,” said Ms. Mossalam, the mosque spokes­woman.

    “He is a vul­ner­a­ble mem­ber of our com­mu­ni­ty and we want to make sure that every­one knows he is a very sweet and inno­cent man,” she said. “I don’t think that he ever thought that his views would ever cause any­one harm.”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 6, 2013, 8:39 am
  12. Won­der how we missed this one?

    From Bloomberg News:
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013–04-22/bombing-suspect-s-uncle-accused-kazakh-president-of-fraud.html

    Bomb­ing Suspect’s Uncle Accused Kaza­kh Pres­i­dent of Fraud
    By Erik Lar­son — Apr 22, 2013 9:14 PM PT .

    The uncle of the sus­pects in last week’s Boston Marathon bomb­ing told a Lon­don court in 2010 that Kaza­khstan Pres­i­dent Nur­sul­tan Nazarbayev had over­seen the theft of state assets worth bil­lions of dol­lars.

    Rus­lan Tsarni, who is from Kyr­gyzs­tan, the for­mer Sovi­et repub­lic to the south of Kaza­khstan, worked “in var­i­ous capac­i­ties” with a close­ly knit net­work of asso­ciates led by Nazarbayev’s son-in-law from 2000 to 2008 that reg­u­lar­ly engaged in fraud­u­lent busi­ness prac­tices, he said in a wit­ness state­ment to the High Court in Lon­don in Decem­ber 2010, when he was 39 years old. Tsarni said he moved to the U.S. in 2008 after work­ing for the Kaza­kh group. He is now a U.S. cit­i­zen liv­ing in Mont­gomery Vil­lage, Mary­land.

    50:06 April 22 (Bloomberg) — White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney talks about the U.S. pros­e­cu­tion of Dzhokar Tsar­naev, the wound­ed 19-year-old man charged with the bomb­ing of the Boston Marathon and the FBI’s han­dling of a 2011 Russ­ian tip on Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, the elder of the two broth­ers now linked to the bomb­ing. Car­ney, speak­ing at the dai­ly White House press brief­ing, also dis­cuss­es the out­look for immi­gra­tion and gun-con­trol leg­is­la­tion. (Source: Bloomberg)
    .The claims against Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kaza­khstan for more than two decades, were made in a defense state­ment for Mukhtar Ablya­zov, the for­mer chair­man of BTA Bank (BTAS) accused of run­ning a $6 bil­lion fraud at the lender. The for­mer exec­u­tive is now on the run after being sen­tenced to 22 months in prison for con­tempt of court in the Lon­don case.

    In tele­vised state­ments after his nephews Tamar­lan and Dzhokhar Tsar­naev were named as sus­pects in the April 15 ter­ror­ist attack that killed three and wound­ed more than 170, Tsarni called the broth­ers “losers” who had “put a shame on the Tsarni fam­i­ly.”

    Tamar­lan, 26, was killed in a bat­tle with police, while 19- year-old Dzhokhar was cap­tured lat­er that day. Dzhokhar was charged yes­ter­day by U.S. pros­e­cu­tors with using and con­spir­ing to use a weapon of mass destruc­tion result­ing in death.

    Fam­i­ly Con­nec­tions
    Tsarni’s state­ment to the U.K. court, made more than a year before Ablya­zov went into hid­ing, shows the broth­ers’ fam­i­ly was at one time well con­nect­ed in the region and gives a link between the accused bomber’s rel­a­tives and one of the high­est- pro­file com­mer­cial law­suits in the U.K. and Kaza­khstan in recent years.

    Lucy Brad­low, a spokes­woman in Lon­don for Almaty, Kaza­khstan-based BTA Bank, declined to com­ment on Tsarni’s claims. Ablya­zov has made sim­i­lar alle­ga­tions against Nazarbayev in his own defense papers and the gov­ern­ment and the bank have denied them.

    In his wit­ness state­ment in defense of Ablya­zov, Tsarni said Nazarbayev gave his “bless­ing” and pro­tec­tion to the group that rigged auc­tions of state assets, seized banks to sell for a frac­tion of their val­ue to pre-deter­mined buy­ers, and engaged in tax fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing. Tsarni isn’t a par­ty in the bank’s U.K. law­suit against Ablya­zov.

    Tsarni said some mem­bers of the group are now in senior man­age­ment posi­tions at BTA Bank.

    Lender’s Default
    BTA, the biggest Kaza­kh lender before default­ing on $12 bil­lion of debt in 2009, filed a series of civ­il suits against Ablya­zov and ex-Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Roman Solod­chenko claim­ing they siphoned mon­ey from the bank using fake loans, back-dat­ed doc­u­ments and off­shore com­pa­nies. Both men have denied the claims.

    Ablya­zov was sen­tenced to 22 months in prison in Feb­ru­ary 2012 for vio­lat­ing a 2009 court order in the bank’s law­suit by fail­ing to reveal all his assets, includ­ing a house in the British coun­try­side and a Lon­don man­sion. He failed to appear at the hear­ing and his where­abouts are unknown.

    BTA, which was seized by the Kaza­kh gov­ern­ment in 2009, sued Ablya­zov in Britain after he fled there to avoid pros­e­cu­tion over the fraud alle­ga­tions.

    The group “has been loot­ing the bank of any­thing that they can get their hands on fol­low­ing the forced takeover,” Tsarni said in the fil­ing.

    Seiz­ing Assets
    “Very soon after Mr. Ablyazov’s forced depar­ture from Kaza­khstan in ear­ly 2009, there were those with­in the regime who were intent on tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty of seiz­ing what­ev­er assets he held with­in the coun­try that were con­nect­ed to BTA,” Tsarni said.

    Tsarni didn’t say how he was con­nect­ed to Ablya­zov or came to make the fil­ing in his defense. The alle­ga­tions of state fraud also didn’t help Ablya­zov in court.

    Dzhokhar Tsar­naev was found hid­ing in a cov­ered boat in the back yard of a sub­ur­ban Boston home on April 19. His cap­ture end­ed an unprece­dent­ed man­hunt by fed­er­al and state author­i­ties that shut down Boston and sur­round­ing cities.

    Dzhokhar Tsar­naev is in a Boston hos­pi­tal recov­er­ing from wounds sus­tained in a bat­tle with police — the same con­fronta­tion that led to the death of his 26-year-old broth­er. A police offi­cer at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy was shot to death dur­ing the search. Anoth­er offi­cer was wound­ed by gun­fire.

    Lawyer, Con­sul­tant
    Tsarni grew up in Tok­mak, Kyr­gyzs­tan, and grad­u­at­ed from the Law School of Kyr­gyz State Uni­ver­si­ty in 1994, he said in the state­ment. He became a legal con­sul­tant for a year for a U.S. com­pa­ny that was con­tract­ed by USAID under the organization’s pro­gram to assist Kyr­gyzs­tan with eco­nom­ic reforms and “pro­mote pri­vate enter­prise,” he said.

    Tsarni pro­vid­ed train­ing on inter­na­tion­al stan­dards of cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and man­age­ment, accord­ing to the fil­ing. He was also an asso­ciate at an Almaty-based law firm, he said.

    To con­tact the reporter on this sto­ry: Erik Lar­son in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

    ——————

    Now an update:

    Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office: BTA Bank for­mer head faces up to 13 years in prison in Kaza­khstan

    http://en.trend.az/regions/casia/kazakhstan/2177253.html

    6 August 2013, 20:44 (GMT+05:00)

    BTA Bank for­mer head Mukhtar Ablya­zov in Kaza­khstan faces up to 13 years in prison with con­fis­ca­tion of prop­er­ty, offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Kaza­kh Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office Nur­daulet Suindikov said at a press con­fer­ence today.

    “Ablya­zov is accused of com­mit­ting sev­er­al crimes: estab­lish­ing and lead­ing a crim­i­nal group, theft, legal­iza­tion of funds obtained through crimes, ille­gal use of bank funds and so on,” Suindikov told media. “The max­i­mum sen­tence is up to 13 years of impris­on­ment with con­fis­ca­tion of prop­er­ty.”

    “On July 31 the French bureau of Inter­pol informed about the deten­tion of Ablya­zov in France, Suindikov said. “Kaza­khstan’s Nation­al Bureau of Inter­pol imme­di­ate­ly sent an offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of search­ing for Ablya­zov by French col­leagues.”

    He was remand­ed in cus­tody the same day until the munic­i­pal court deter­mines the pro­ce­dur­al sta­tus. On August 1, the court of Aix-en-Provence town autho­rized Ablya­zov’s deten­tion up to 40 days in accor­dance with the French crim­i­nal pro­ce­dure leg­is­la­tion.

    Suindikov added that accord­ing to the court’s deci­sion, Ablya­zov will stay in a prison of Luynes town until all pro­ce­dures relat­ing to extra­di­tion are over. On August 2 the Kaza­kh Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office sent a let­ter to France to extra­dite Ablya­zov home.

    Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian law enforce­ment agen­cies sent a con­fir­ma­tion about search­ing for Ablya­zov and the inten­tion of the French author­i­ties to extra­dite him to these coun­tries.

    “These process­es are inde­pen­dent of each oth­er,” he added. “Nobody is enti­tled to inter­fere or influ­ence the deci­sions made by the com­pe­tent bod­ies of oth­er coun­tries relat­ing to the search and inten­tion to seek extra­di­tion of accused per­sons,” Suindikov added. “The extra­di­tion of per­sons sus­pect­ed of com­mit­ting crimes is reg­u­lat­ed by the inter­nal leg­is­la­tion of the coun­tries where they are hid­ing, as well as inter­na­tion­al agree­ments.”

    As for the prospects for Ablya­zov’s extra­di­tion to Kaza­khstan, offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Kaza­kh Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office said that a pos­i­tive trend of extra­dit­ing the indi­vid­u­als, accused of crimes, from Euro­pean coun­tries on the basis of reci­procity, that is, even in the absence of bilat­er­al agree­ments has recent­ly appeared.

    Do you have any feed­back? Con­tact our jour­nal­ist at agency@trend.az

    —————–

    ******
    So what if Rus­lan was tes­ti­fy­ing on behalf of Ablya­zov because some of the loot­ed Bil­lions were part of a slush-fund for U.S. NGO ops in the region?
    ******

    Here’s part of a sum­ma­ry from a legal office:

    The chron­i­cles of the JSC BTA Bank lit­i­ga­tion
    Mon­day, 03 Decem­ber 2012 00:00 Mac­far­lanes LLP

    http://www.inhouselawyer.co.uk/index.php/litigation-a-dispute-resolution/10037-the-chronicles-of-the-jsc-bta-bank-litigation

    (Excerpts)

    “The lit­i­ga­tion at the heart of the cas­es dis­cussed in this arti­cle con­cerns the claim of JSC BTA Bank (the Bank) against its for­mer chair­man, Mr Ablya­zov (A) and his asso­ciates, which com­menced in August 2009 (the Pro­ceed­ings). The Bank is one of the largest banks in Kaza­khstan and was effec­tive­ly nation­alised on 2 Feb­ru­ary 2009 in the wake of the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis. Until its nation­al­i­sa­tion, as well as chair­man, A was the ben­e­fi­cial own­er of the major­i­ty of the Bank’s shares. In Jan­u­ary 2009, A (and some of his asso­ciates) fled to the UK. Var­i­ous crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions are pend­ing against him (and his asso­ciates) in Kaza­khstan, and at least nine sets of UK civ­il pro­ceed­ings have been issued. 


    The Pro­ceed­ings revolve around the Bank’s claim that A orches­trat­ed a ‘scheme of mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion’, through which sev­er­al bil­lion US dol­lars were extract­ed from the Bank in 2008. The Bank’s case is that the whole scheme was a sham car­ried out by and for the ben­e­fit of A and his asso­ciates, who chan­nelled the mon­ey through a num­ber of com­pa­nies. A denies these claims and con­sid­ers them to be an attempt by the pres­i­dent of Kaza­khstan to take con­trol of his assets in sup­port of a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed claim against him, as he is a lead­ing fig­ure in Kazakhstan’s demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion. A claims to have been sub­ject­ed to tor­ture while impris­oned in Kaza­khstan and two unsuc­cess­ful attempts to assas­si­nate him.”
    The core lit­i­ga­tion is under the con­trol of Teare J, who has described it as an ‘extra­or­di­nary case’ ‘being fought by means of the foren­sic equiv­a­lent of trench war­fare’. Before even reach­ing tri­al on the sub­stan­tive issues, the lit­i­ga­tion has pro­duced in the region of 50 inter­im appli­ca­tions and a sub­stan­tial vol­ume of new case law. While the facts of the Pro­ceed­ings are extra­or­di­nary, many of the deci­sions relat­ing to the enforce­ment of freez­ing orders are essen­tial read­ing for prac­ti­tion­ers of fraud lit­i­ga­tion. This arti­cle sum­maris­es some of the more high-pro­file deci­sions and focus­es, in par­tic­u­lar, on the Bank’s attempts to enforce freez­ing orders (and ancil­lary dis­clo­sure orders) obtained against A and his asso­ciates.”
    ***
    “A filed a wit­ness state­ment in con­nec­tion with his dis­clo­sure oblig­a­tions under the freez­ing order. The mate­r­i­al con­tained in his wit­ness state­ment was sub­ject to a ‘lawyers’ eyes only’ restric­tion and could not be viewed direct­ly by the Bank (the LEO restric­tion).”
    ———————-

    Won­der if that wit­ness state­ment was Rus­lan... 


    Posted by Swamp | August 8, 2013, 9:31 am

Post a comment