Prosecutor: Boston bombing witnesses afraid to testify (d'uh!)

© AFP Photo / FBI

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

WhoWhatWhy

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The defense witnesses in the Boston Bombing trial certainly have reason to be afraid to testify, given the long official intimidation campaign against them.

Yet, ironically, it is now the government that is claiming its witnesses are scared and even unwilling to testify. Unsurprisingly, the judge overseeing the trial against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has agreed with the prosecutors.

Since the Boston Marathon bombing last year, has reported on a pattern of intimidation towards people associated with the accused bombers, Dzhokhar and his late elder brother, Tamerlan. Those connected to the case have been intimidated, deported, jailed, and even killed .

It got so bad that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense asked U.S. District Court Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. for permission to conceal the names of individual witnesses until the day before they're due to testify. That's because, the defense argues, they fear the witnesses will be subject to further FBI harassment.

Unusual Request

Judy Clarke, a member of the defense team, admitted it was an unusual request. "We don't want to do it," Clarke told the court. "We're already struggling to get people to talk to us. We are really worried about losing the slim list of real potential witnesses we have."

The government countered that it was having trouble convincing bombing victims to cooperate. They are "afraid, if not unwilling, to testify against the man accused of dismembering or traumatizing them in a terrorist attack." Further, the prosecution argued, keeping Tsarnaev's witnesses under wraps would hand him an unfair advantage.

On Nov. 12, O'Toole sided with the prosecution, ordering the defense to disclose its preliminary witness list by Dec. 29. He also announced that jury selection will begin on Jan. 5, when an initial 1,200 prospective jurors will be called in to fill out questionnaires over the course of the next three days.

Leaving aside the question of Tsarnaev's guilt, which has been officially presented as a foregone conclusion with little outside critical analysis of the investigation, his chances at trial are numerically slim.

The Justice Department's latest statistics show a criminal conviction rate of 93 percent.

Comment: From James Henry's piece on witness harassment linked in the article:

One of these targets was Tatiana Gruzdeva, Todashev's 20-year-old girlfriend. She was deported to Russia on October 11. ... She had described for the magazine in vivid detail what happened when several FBI agents back in May had showed up at the Orlando apartment she and Todashev shared and accused him of involvement in the Boston bombing. Days of harassment and interrogation followed, she said, as the FBI tried to get Todashev to confess to involvement in the Boston bombing, and to get her to make statements implicating her boyfriend, but she continued to insist Todashev had been in Orlando with her when the bombing occurred.

Then, she said, the government agents surprised her with a new accusation: Todashev, they alleged, had been involved in a gruesome, drug-related, 2011 triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts. The agents tried, without success, to force her to implicate Todashev in that crime. Then, while she was still in shock from that latest assertion, they demanded she tell them what further criminal activities he had in store.

That's just one: add to that list Ashurmamad Miraliev, Khusn Taramiv, and Ibragim Todashev, who was murdered in cold blood by FBI agents. Apparently the FBI has been trying to 'turn' these witnesses into 'informers' and get them to spy on local mosques and restaurants. For SOTT's coverage of the bombing, see Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley's book: Manufactured Terror.