Yet Another Lone Wolf Dies in Confrontation with Law Enforcement

Gabe mentioned this account in his morning post. It's still pretty mysterious.

From CBS News:

A man named Ibragim Todashev had been a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, possibly due to their joint interest in martial arts and murdering civilians.

An FBI agent and two Massachusetts state troopers went to his apartment to interview him. At some point, he went crazy For Reasons We Will Never Understand, and advanced with a knife on the FBI agent. The agent sustained minor injuries, and Todashev was shot dead.

Remember that story that Tamerlan was suspected of having a connection to a triple homicide of his friend? This Todaschev may have been connected to that.

Officials told NBC News that investigators did not believe Todashev played any role in the bomb attack, but were questioning him in connection with a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev also may have been a suspect.

A few days ago Mary Katherine Ham wrote this wonderfully sarcastic headline:

Note Found In Boat Points to Mystifying Motive We May Never Truly Understand

“Basically the note says that he does not mourn his brother Tamerlan, that Tamerlan was a martyr now and that he was in paradise, that Dzhokhar expected to join him there soon,” Miller said. “That the bombings were in retribution for the US crimes against Muslims in places like Iraq and Afghanistan; that the victims of the Boston bombing were ‘collateral damage,’ the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in US wars around the world, summing up that when you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims.”

Per MKH, the NYT deigned to report this, albeit as an incidental fact mentioned deep in an article about another topic entirely. That story concerns the FBI's interest in another Tsarnave pal, Musa Khadzhimuratov, who, based on the first name, I'm guessing is the mysterious "Mischa" we previously heard might have been influencing the brothers towards the path of jihad.

“We talked about family, not religion or politics,” he said. He said he had no inkling that Mr. Tsarnaev had driven several times from his home in Cambridge, Mass., to New Hampshire to buy fireworks for the explosive powder used in the bombs or to shoot at a firearms range in Manchester — let alone that he would attack the marathon.

I've highlighted the part I think is less than credible.

posted by Ace at 12:46 PM

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