FBI 'Bandits' Executed Friend of Boston Suspect, Dad Says

MOSCOW-The father of a Chechen man who was friends with one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers claims his son was shot "execution style" by the FBI last week.

"I want justice and an investigation in accordance with American laws to punish those who are guilty," Abdul-Baki Todashev said. "They were not FBI employees, but bandits."

The deceased man, 27 year-old Ibragim Todashev, was shot and killed by FBI investigators who were interrogating him about whether he had any role in, or had any advance knowledge of, last month's Boston Marathon bombing. They also questioned him about his role in an unsolved triple murder in 2011. Todashev was a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the Boston attack.

Todashev was shot seven times, including once to the head, according to his father. He displayed graphic photos, taken by friends who claimed the body from an Orlando area morgue, as evidence. The authenticity of the photos could not be verified, but they show several bullet holes in the body, including one to the head.

"To make sure that he was dead," the father said, speaking in Russian.

At a press conference in Moscow, where he is applying for a visa to travel to the United States to collect the body, Abdul-Baki Todashev questioned why his son had been shot so many times even though he was said to be unarmed.

"They could have simply grabbed my son or, in the worst case, they could have wounded him," he said, noting that the FBI's story has been evolving.

"They simply killed him as they wanted and my opinion is that they wanted to get rid of him to shut him up," he added.

Initially, the FBI said that the agents felt endangered after Todashev attacked them with a knife and they fired on him in self defense. This week, however, officials said he lunged, possibly for one of the agent's guns or a sword that was in the room, but was unarmed when he was killed. The press conference was scheduled before the latest FBI revelation.

Abdul-Baki Todashev said his son was killed during his third interrogation by law enforcement. During the first, he said, the younger Todashev was questioned about his role and knowledge of theBoston bombing. During the second interrogation, they began to ask him about the triple murder in Waltham, Mass., he said. Officials claim Todashev was in the process of confessing to the murders when he threatened the agents.

The father denied his son was involved in the Boston bombing, saying Todashev only knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev because they boxed at the same gym in Boston.

"They were just acquaintances, not close friends," the father said. He denied his son had any ties to militants or extreme religious views.

The father cast doubt on the FBI's claims that his son was about to confess to a role in the triple murder, noting that his son had received a green card just a few months ago and would not have been able to do so if there was any suspicion about him.

"I know him so well. I know what he can do and what he can't," the father said.

He questioned why a friend, who was also interviewed that night, was asked to leave when they began to interview Todashev. He also wondered why no video or audio evidence has been made public to corroborate the FBI's version of events.

Also Read

Boston bombing suspect is walking, mother says

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) — The remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has recovered enough to walk and assured his parents in a phone conversation that he and his slain brother were innocent, their mother told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the father of a Chechen immigrant killed in Floridawhile being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to the slain brother maintained that the U.S. agents killed his son "execution-style."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, walked without a wheelchair to speak to his mother last week for the first and only phone conversation they have had since he has been in custody, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the AP.

In a rare glimpse at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's state of mind, he told her he was getting better and that he had a very good doctor, but was struggling to understand what happened, she said.

"He didn't hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: What is this? What's happening?," she said.

The April 15 bombings killed three people and wounded more than 260. Elder brother, 26-year-oldTamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar remains in a prison hospital after being badly wounded.

"I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan," their mother said, standing by the family's insistent belief that their children are innocent.

The Tsarnaevs met the AP in their new apartment in a 14-story building in a well-to-do area of Makhachkala, the capital of the restive Caucasus province of Dagestan. The apartment had no furniture apart from a TV, a few rugs, and wallpaper materials lying on the floor.

Anzor Tsarnaev, the suspects' father, said they had bought it for Tamerlan, his wife, and their young daughter in the expectation that they would move to Makhachkala later this year. He added that they planned to turn their old home in a dingy district on the outskirts of town into a dentist's office, so that Dzhokhar, a dental hygiene student, could work out of it after completing his studies.

"All I can do is pray to God and hope that one day fairness will win out, our children will be cleared, and we will at least get Dzhokhar back, crippled, but at least alive," Tsarnaev said.

Separately, at a news conference in Moscow, the father of a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter who was killed during FBI questioning accused agents of being "bandits" who executed his son.

Abdul-Baki Todashev showed journalists 16 photographs that he said were of his son, Ibragim, in a Florida morgue. He said his son had six gunshot wounds to his torso and one to the back of his head and the pictures were taken by his son's friend, Khusen Taramov.

It was not immediately possible to authenticate the photographs.

The FBI says Todashev was being questioned by an FBI agent and two Massachusetts state troopers about his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as well as about a 2011 triple slaying in Massachusetts.

Three law enforcement officials said initially that Ibragim Todashev had lunged at the FBI agent with a knife, although two of them later said it was no longer clear what had happened.

The father said his son was "100 percent unarmed."

Taramov confirmed Thursday that he had taken some pictures of Ibragim Todashev's body at an Orlando funeral home and sent them to the father. He said Ibragim Todashev had a decorative sword with a broken handle, but that it was not a weapon.

"The sword wouldn't cut nothing," Tamarov said. "I played with it many times. It wasn't sharp from any angle. It would do the same harm as a piece of wood."

A spokesman for the Boston FBI declined to comment Thursday on the claim that Todashev was unarmed.

The father said Taramov told him that U.S. agents interrogated him on the street while five officials interrogated Todashev in his Florida house for eight hours on May 22, the night he was shot.

Todashev's father said that his son moved to the U.S. in 2008 on a study exchange program and met Tsarnaev at a boxing gym in Boston in 2011, about a year before he moved to Orlando. He said the two were "not particularly close friends."

Prior to last month's bombings, Todashev underwent an operation for a sports injury and was on crutches, making it physically impossible for him to have been involved in the bombings, his father said. He added that Todashev had recently received a green card and was planning to return to Chechnya for the summer last Friday, two days after he was killed.

The father said he and his brother were interviewed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Thursday as they sought a visa to take his son's body back to Chechnya.

FBI agents interrogated the younger Todashev twice before the night he was shot, his father said. He said his son told him that he thought Tsarnaev had been set up to take the blame for the bombings.

"I'd only seen and heard things like that in the movies — they shoot somebody and then a shot in the head to make sure," Todashev said.

"These just aren't FBI agents, they're bandits," he added.

The Tsarnaevs' parents have held fast to their belief that their sons were framed. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, dressed all in black and still visibly distressed, showed AP several YouTube videos on an iPad she claimed cleared her sons. They could not be authenticated by the AP.

"I remember when our cat was sick, Tamerlan was sick himself for two days afterward, because he was so worried about her," Tsarnaeva said.

She said Tamerlan told her about Todashev, and that she and her husband had invited him to visit them in Russia, though he never came. Tamerlan later told them that he and Todashev were unlikely to continue training together since they practiced different sports, and he appeared to have lost track of him after Todashev moved to Florida, Tsarnaeva added.

_____

Seddon reported from Moscow. Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie in Boston and Kyle Hightower in Orlando contributed to the story.

_____

Douglas Karpen Snipped Babies’ Necks Worse Than Gosnell, Is Anyone Noticing?

Houston, TX (LiveActionNews) — If Americans found the Gosnell trial disturbing, there can be no words to describe Douglas Karpen’s abortion clinic in Houston, Texas. Operation Rescue has been on the scene for years, working to stop Karpen. Thanks to Operation Rescue’s Abortion Whistleblowers Program, four women who previously worked for Karpen at the Aaron Women’s Clinic have come forward to describe their horrific experiences.

Like many abortionists, Karpen has had a string of problems at his clinics. A young teenager died from a botched performed on her by Karpen. He has beencalled before the Texas Medical Board to answer allegations. In one of the most horrifying accusations, “waste” from Karpen’s clinic began leaking into a neighboring parking lot:

[O]n February 6, 2005…a sewer broke at Karpen’s Texas Ambulatory Surgical Center, located at 2421 N. Shepherd in Houston, causing sewage to spill into the parking lot of a neighboring car dealership. Maribeth Smith, an employee of the car dealership said she is convinced she saw human body parts mixed in with the sewage. She took photographs, believing the human tissue came from the clinic.

‘Whether it’s legal or not, it’s not right,’ Smith said. ‘This whole area is nothing but raw sewage and bloody pieces. There were little legs coming out from one side.’

Three of the four whistleblowers from Karpen’s clinic – Deborah Edge, Gigi Aguliar, and Krystal Rodriguez – allowed Life Dynamics to film them telling about their unimaginable experiences while working for Karpen. The video, below, is a must-see for any American. If Americans are willing to support abortion, they must ask themselves if they are truly willing to accept the inhuman horrors that come along with it.

Operation Rescue reports that the women from Karpen’s clinic brought evidence with them when they left. They took photos on their cell phones of illegally murdered babies.

In both cases, the babies’ skin is pink, noting a lack of masceration, an early form of decomposition that happens in babies that die in the womb. Massive bruising on the extremities of one of the babies indicates the baby’s heart was pulsing with life when the trauma was inflicted likely when grasping instruments latched on to bring the baby down into the birth canal. The eyes of the other child are open in a nightmarish expression of pain, revealing development greater than 26-28 weeks. Both sets of photos were taken sometime in 2011.

Deborah Edge, who worked as a surgical assistant, explicitly described how – and how often – Karpen would kill newborn babies:

When he did an abortion, especially an over 20 week abortion, most of the time the fetus would come completely out before he cut the spinal cord or he introduced one of the instruments into the soft spot of the fetus, in order to kill the fetus. …

I think every morning I saw several, on several occasions. … If we had 20-something patients, of course ten, or twelve, or fifteen patients would be large procedures, and out of those large procedures, I’m pretty sure that I was seeing at least three or four fetuses that were completely delivered in some way or another.

Edge continued to reveal even more mind-blowing information about Karpen’s actions:

She described how some babies would emerge too soon and would be alive, moving, and breathing. She also told of how Karpen would sometimes deliver the babies feet first with the toes wiggling until he stabbed them with a surgical implement. At the moment the toes would suddenly splay out before going limp. Sometimes he would kill the babies by ‘twisting the head off the neck,’ according to Edge.

But not all the babies came out intact. When there was difficulty, Karpen would dismember them, a process that was, according to the surgical assistant Deborah Edge, a bloody mess.

‘Sometimes he couldn’t get the fetus out,’ she explained. ‘He would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize. And I’m talking about the whole floor dirty. I’m talking about me drenched in blood.’

The U.K.’s Daily Mail describes the women’s tragic account of one baby who attempted to hold on for dear life at Karpen’s clinic, and failed.

The women described one occasion where a fetus that Karpen thought was dead suddenly ‘opened its eyes and grabbed (the doctor’s) finger’ after he wrenched it from the womb. However, it met a similar fate to the other fetuses at the clinic, the women said.

Breitbart also reported on the video expose of Karpen’s clinic which demonstrated that Karpen purposely risked the lives of women who came to him for abortions.

Rodriguez also accused the abortionist of showing disregard for the safety of his patients. She indicated that he would sometimes insert the instruments through the woman’s stomach if it was the easiest way to kill the baby.

Edge also claimed that she routinely observed Karpen ‘hurting patients on the table’ and not telling victims of botched abortions that he had lacerated their cervix or uterus.

A third former employee, Gigi Aguilar, alleged, ‘If he had a patient that asked a lot of questions, he would prefer for them to be put to sleep.’

‘The women who go there had no idea what they were getting themselves into,’ Edge said.

The numbingly ugly truth about Douglas Karpen’s clinic demonstrates that, despite claims from Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and other abortion supporters, Kermit Gosnell was not alone. He was not an aberration. When women, doctors, and clinic workers are sucked into the lie that abortion is just a matter of simple “choice,” they are all too often blinded to the fact that it never ends there. Gosnell, Karpen, Nicola Riley, LeRoy Carhart – and others – demonstrate that abortion is nothing but the horrific taking of innocent children’s lives. Such a “choice” should never be allowed in a civilized society.

Two weeks ago, after intense pressure from pro-life activists and a demand from Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office announced that it would look into the former workers’ claims against Karpen. The Texas Department of State Health Services also claims to be investigating the facts.

Pro-lifers ought to keep the pressure on and ensure that a full investigation is truly performed so that Karpen can be brought to justice. You can contact the following Texas government officials to ask that the investigation continue in an appropriate and thorough way. You can also get updated about Karpen and participate in action items by visiting the Texas Gosnell website.

Mike Anderson, District Attorney Harris County, Texas

1201 Franklin Street, Suite 600, Houston, Texas 77002-1923

Voice: (713)-755-5800

E-Mail: Armand_Stephanie@dao.hctx.net

Greg Abbott, Attorney General of Texas

Office of the Attorney General

PO Box 12548

Austin, TX 78711-2548

Voice: (512) 463-2050

E-Mail: robert.allen@texasattorneygeneral.gov

Texas Medical Board

333 Guadalupe

Tower 3, Suite 610

Austin, TX 78701

Voice: (512) 305-7010

E-Mail: verifcic@tmb.state.tx.us

Besieged Syria rebels seek help, Assad eyes missiles

Forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are seen in Qusair village May 30, 2013. REUTERS/ Rami Bleible

Forces of Syrian President Bashar al Assad are seen in Qusair village May 30, 2013. REUTERS/ Rami Bleible

By Erika Solomon and Mariam Karouny

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels under siege near the Lebanese border pleaded for help on Thursday against government troops and their Hezbollah allies as a confident President Bashar al-Assadspoke of having new Russian missiles.

Though Moscow contradicted suggestions he had taken delivery of an entire, long-range S-300 anti-aircraft system which alarmsIsrael, Russia's plan to send them highlighted the international confrontation brewing over Syria, even as Moscow and Washingtonwork together for a peace conference between the warring sides.

With Iran and its Lebanese partner Hezbollah also rallying to Assad's defense and his Western-backed Syrian opponents mired in squabbles, the president was quoted sounding confident of his position at home and abroad. He would attend talks in Geneva, he said, but he expected to keep fighting the revolt.

Among his enemies on the battlefield, rebels in the besieged border town of Qusair warned that it could be wiped off the map and hundreds of their wounded might die if no help came soon.

"The town is surrounded and there's no way to bring in medical aid," Malek Ammar, an opposition activist in the town, told Reuters over an Internet link, adding that about 100 of the 700 wounded needed bottled oxygen to keep breathing.

"What we need them to do," he said of other rebel units, "is come to the outskirts of the city and attack the checkpoints so we can get routes in and out of the city.

There was little immediate sign, however, of military relief or of a negotiated settlement that might end the fighting.

Harsh words from Moscow against the Syrian opposition's insistence on Assad's removal as a precondition for talks, and Russian criticism of Washington for considering a no-fly zone to help the rebels, underlined the geopolitical stakes in the war.

An exchange of fire across the Turkish border on Thursday was a reminder that all Syria's neighbors risk being sucked in to a regional conflict.

Rebels at Qusair and comrades encircled near Damascus, who also appealed for reinforcements, face shortages of weapons. Fears of the Islamists in the rebel ranks have deterred Western powers from supplying them, despite wanting to see Assad fall.

The result, after two years of fighting and more than 80,000 deaths, has been an increasingly sectarian stalemate in which Assad has lost control of swathes of territory but remains in power. Taking back Qusair would help secure access from Damascus to the coastline populated by his minority fellow Alawites.

For the rebels, mostly drawn from the Sunni Muslim majority, Qusair secures supply lines from sympathizers in Lebanon and from further afield, notably Sunni-ruled states in the Gulf.

DIRE WARNING

In a statement, the rebel commanders at Qusair warned of dire consequences if help fails to arrive for men who have been fighting house to house for over a week against a force armed with tanks and rocket-launchers and spearheaded by Lebanese fighters from Hezbollah, seasoned in a 2006 war against Israel:

"If all rebel fronts do not move to stop this crime being led by Hezbollah and Assad's traitorous army of dogs ... we will soon be saying that there was once a city called Qusair."

Shells were landing by the minute and the attackers seemed to be advancing more quickly after seizing a nearby air base.

Elsewhere, rebels blockaded in eastern suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta appealed for help on Facebook, saying Assad's forces were "preparing to commit more massacres".

They pointedly said they held not just fellow guerrilla units responsible for coming to their aid but also the Syrian National Coalition, whose exile members have spent a week arguing in Istanbul over how to present a common front at the talks Washington and Moscow are trying to arrange in Geneva.

An attempt to heal rifts between Islamist and liberal wings of the opposition by offering liberals more seats on the exile body that Arab and Western powers want to form a transitional government failed to mend fences with fighters inside Syria.

Despite an offer by the Sunni Islamists who dominate the Coalition to give a liberal bloc more seats, the haggling continued, to the frustration of Turkey, Gulf Arab states and Western diplomats who have hoped that the body can use the peace conference to start taking responsibilities.

Inside Syria, the body which groups very diverse fighting units issued its own response, demanding that it be granted half the seats in the Coalition - a reflection of persistent mistrust between fighters and exiles.

RUSSIAN CRITICISM

Russia, an ally of Damascus since the Cold War when Assad's late father was in power, scoffed at the opposition's demands for a deadline to secure the president's removal as a condition for them attending the talks. Russian, U.S. and U.N. officials will hold a planning meeting next Wednesday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Coalition seemed to be "doing everything they can to prevent a political process from starting ... and achieve military intervention".

"We consider such approaches unacceptable," he said, referring to rebel pleas for Western weapons which persuaded Britain and France this week to end an EU arms embargo.

His ministry also chided Washington for keeping open the possibility of imposing a no-fly zone. It said that "cast doubt on the sincerity of the desire of some of our ... partners for success in international efforts" to end the war.

Rivalry between Russia and Western powers has deadlocked previous international efforts to end the fighting but fears that the conflict was spreading - notably with Israel bombing Syria, Iranian-backed Hezbollah declaring it would fight for Assad and reports of troops using chemical weapons - prompted Washington and Moscow to launch the joint call for a conference.

In a television interview not yet broadcast but quoted by a Lebanese newspaper, Assad said he planned to go to the "Geneva 2" meeting but was unconvinced of a fruitful outcome.

He underlined the extent of international resources he can call on, despite Western sanctions, by saying Syria had received a first shipment of S-300 missiles from Russia under a deal signed before the conflict and which Israel fears could pose a threat to aviation over its own airspace.

A source close to Russia's defense ministry said, however, that the "hardware itself" had yet to be delivered to Syria, where Moscow has a Mediterranean naval base. But, the source added, "certain parts of the contract may have been fulfilled".

The United States has urged Russia not to supply the system. As with Assad's existing stocks of heavy weaponry, including chemical warheads, neighboring states are concerned not only that the existing government might use them but that they could fall into the hands of militant groups fighting to remove it.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Istanbul, Jonathon Burch and Humeyra Pamuk in Ankara and Steve Gutterman, Alissa de Carbonnel and Thomas Grove in Moscow; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by David Stamp)

Article: Turkey arrests 12 in raids on 'terrorist' organization

Article: Assad says Russia will honor weapons deals

Article: U.S. investigates report of American woman killed in Syria

Article: Russian, U.S. and U.N. officials to meet on Syria on June 5

Student says his tip led to Ore. bomb plot arrest

ALBANY, Ore. (AP) — When 17-year-old Truman Templeton didn't want to go to an assembly at hisOregon high school, his mother knew something was wrong.

She asked, and he said that a classmate had started talking about making bombs and had brought diagrams to West Albany High School.

His mother turned to a family friend, who told her, "I know exactly who to call."

Shannon Lewis, a juvenile probation officer for Linn County, told the Albany Democrat-Herald(http://bit.ly/15j6CLo ) she relayed the mother's information to the Albany Police Department's tip line, and an officer put her in touch with the 911 dispatch center.

Grant Acord, 17, was arrested that night at his father's house in North Albany. Investigators found evidence of bomb-making and two bombs at his mother's home.

Acord is charged with attempted aggravated murder and possession and manufacture of explosive devices. He is to be tried as an adult. He has not yet entered a plea.

Templeton told KATU-TV (http://bit.ly/12MQfop ) that Acord bragged he could make bombs, raising suspicions in the past few months. He said another friend saw a bomb or bomb components at Acord's house, and Acord brought books about bomb-making to school.

"The tipping point for me when I was just worried about being in school," Templeton said. "OK, school is supposed to be a safe and secure environment. I should not have to worry about this kind of stuff."

Templeton said he hadn't known what police would find, if anything, at Acord's home.

"When I saw video of bomb squads and people in hazmat suits putting evidence in these bags and dumping chemicals, I realized this was a serious operation," he said. "If I hadn't come forward with the information I had, this could have been a lot worse."

___