NYT quotes anonymous official: Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a drug dealer

[temmer]

Here's a remarkable piece in the NYT still trying to "connect the dots" between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Waltham triple murder in 2011 - notwithstanding the obscure confession and even more obscure killing of Ibragim Todashev.

This piece is pure gossip IMO, with the usual "officials speaking under the condition of anonymity". It also doesn't address the scandalous behavior of the FBI in the aftermath of Todashev's killing. I suspect distraction.

One law enforcement official said the murders were part of a “drug rip-off.” The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said the authorities were able to put together “a lot of circumstantial pieces” that they used to pressure Mr. Todashev into implicating himself and Mr. Tsarnaev.

Investigators have been helped by DNA evidence taken from Mr. Tsarnaev after his death that they are using as part of the Waltham investigation, according to the official, who believes that local investigators did not have such forensic evidence before the bombings. Another friend of Mr. Mess said that after the bombings, investigators told him “they have info that may have placed Tam with Brendan the day before or night of the killings.”

An F.B.I. agent investigating the bombings interviewed Mr. Todashev about Mr. Tsarnaev in his Orlando, Fla., apartment in May and he began to provide information about the Waltham case. To get him to talk, the investigators “made him believe he’s done, and the only way he could help himself is confess and lay out the details of what had happened,” a law enforcement official said. Mr. Todashev “flipped out” and attacked the agent and was then shot at least a half-dozen times in circumstances that still remain unclear.

The senior law enforcement official said that at the time Mr. Todashev was shot, two Massachusetts state police investigators had left the room to inform a prosecutor that Mr. Todashev was admitting he and Mr. Tsarnaev had carried out the Waltham murders. This official said that Mr. Tsarnaev “was more of a wannabe drug dealer than a big one. He was dealing dope, marijuana, low-level stuff.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/us/boston-bombing-suspect-is-said-to-be-linked-to-2011-triple-murder-case.html?src=twr&pagewanted=all&_r=0

[Jessy169]

1. I read about him being a pot dealer

Big deal. I like most of the pot dealers I ever met (and, uh, perhaps depended on). I won't hold it against him. But there are other things about Mr. Tsarnaev that are unforgivable -- assuming of course he's proven guilty, which seems likely.

[temmer]

4. possibly - Tamerlan and Brendan Mess were close friends

Brendan's two murdered friends were definitely Jewish; for Brendan, the accounts differ. In the media, and also here on DU, it has been surmised that the murderers had anti-semitic motives. Given the cruel and ritualized nature of the murders (all of them had the throats deeply cut, were covered with weed etc.), I find it hard to believe that Tamerlan Tsarnaev killed his friend this way to fulfill his Islamic anti-semitic mission.

The NYT article downplays the role of the girlfriend of Brendan Mess, who told the Boston Globe some intime details about Tamerlan and Brendan and their relation. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was practicing Islam and admonished her sometimes to follow Islamic rules more strictly, but she apparently quite liked him and didn't view him as a radical Islamist. But - her account leaves room for the possibility that Tamerlan was a FBI undercover agent to infiltrate radical Islamists.

She said she found the victims — Mess, 25; Erik H. ­Weissman, 31; and Raphael M. Teken, 37 — in separate rooms, their throats slashed, their bodies covered with marijuana.

The woman said she did not describe Tsarnaev to police as a suspect in the triple homicide but rather identified him as one of many visitors to the apartment. Police did not ask her about Tsarnaev after she gave them his name, she said.

“But if they questioned every­one whose fingerprints were in the apartment, I’m sure Tam’s fingerprints had to be there,’’ she told the Globe in a phone interview Friday.

The woman said Tsarnaev, who was born and lived his early years in former Soviet republics, had told Mess in the weeks before the killings that the FBI had placed him on a terrorist watch list.

“Brendan said, ‘The FBI is watching him; they think he’s a terrorist,’ ’’ the woman recalled. “We laughed about it. We never took it seriously.’’

Federal authorities have said that the FBI interviewed Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of the Russian government.

Mess’s girlfriend said she knew with certainty that he kept a handgun in the apartment. Another friend said earlier this week that Mess had been badly beaten by his marijuana supplier years earlier when he was short on his payment and then familiarized himself with firearms.

Mess and his girlfriend shared the apartment with Weissman, who was struggling financially after Boston police had seized a large amount of cash and drugs in a raid on his Roslindale apartment.

“They were pretty peaceful people, but I know Brendan had one gun,’’ his girlfriend said. “I think it was for protection. I don’t understand why he couldn’t have used it’’ during the deadly assault.

The woman said she never understood what the motive for the killings could have been, other than perhaps a robbery. Although about $5,000 remained in the apartment after the slayings, she said, she was aware that Mess and Weissman had a much larger amount of cash. She could not estimate how much.

She said Mess was such a close friend of Tsarnaev that he often asked her to cook only ­halal meat for Tsarnaev to honor his Muslim customs when he visited.

“I just can’t believe Tam would back stab Brendan like that,’’ she said. “It’s so painful to me, because Brendan was so open and loving with Tam.’’

In the week before the slayings, she said, she had an ­intense quarrel with Mess. She said she went to Florida to visit a friend and “clear my head.’’

She was scheduled to return on the morning of Sept. 12, 2011, and expected Mess to pick her up at Logan International Airport. She said she called him at 7:30 the previous night.

“It was the last time I heard his voice,’’ she said. “He said, ‘I love you.’ ’’

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/05/24/friend-triple-murder-victim-says-police-knew-ties-marathon-bombing-suspect/tUZsGAQb59kYYXo7emjbHM/story.html

[truedelphi]

2. I will always beleive the Tsarnaev Bros were patsies.

The FBI utilizes the same hideous procedures that the DEA does. Inside the DEA, the drug kingpin is allowed to become a snitch, and often serves very little time. He has value to the FBI, no matter how violent he is, no matter how many people he screws over. As long as this kingpin is NOT under the radar of the M$M, he will not suffer.

But those he snitches on can be given fifteen eyar sentences. The saddest case I know of was a young African American woman, who had inadvertently bought a condo in the same complex with a rather major drug dealer. he came onto her, and she didn't like him, and brushed him off. When he went down, she was immedaitely named as one of the people he normally dealt with. The DEA framed her, and she is serving a lengthy sentence while Mr Kingpin is already free.

Now you have the FBI finding people who are attracted to violence, and they do the same thing. The people who are attracted to violence are needed by the FBI. More minor players are set up as patsies.

It is interesting how many people connected to the case have already died. the first "person of interest" was found drowned in a creek just a short time after his release. The older Tsarnaev Brother was killed, with one woman coming forward and stating that she witnessed him being shot and killed by uniformed men. (Can't remember if she could identify these men as Boston police, or not.)

Then several of the FBI agent who were involved in the Boston Bombing case also died in a training mission in VA.


But the real kicker for me was Mr Todashev's murder by Federal Agent in Orlando.

[JI7]

3. i don't think it's just gossip, this has been repoted on for some time

[temmer]

5. for the first time I read that Ibragim Todashev was a pot dealer

and I don't believe it. Nobody else says that, and it doesn't fit his personality.

The FBi is blowing smoke while the *real* Waltham murderers are having a good time.

Congratulations.