Update
The Saudi student wrongly accused of being a suspect in the Boston marathon bombings earlier this week has again been mislabeled — this time for violating his student visa. The student, who has been recovering from shrapnel wounds sustained during Monday’s attack has been cleared by police and is no longer a suspect in the case. Despite this information, Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) questioned Janet Napolitano at a House panel Thursday, accusing the Department of Homeland Security of deporting the student, although he had already been deemed innocent. The student has not been deported.
“I want them to do their job and that’s why I say, wouldn’t you agree with me that it’s negligent for us as an American administration to deport someone who was reportedly at the scene of the bombing. And we’re going to deport him, not to be able to question him anymore. Is that not negligent?” Duncan said.
Napolitano quickly responded to the accusation, saying,“I’m not going to answer that question. It is so full of misstatements and misapprehensions that it’s just not worthy of an answer. There has been so much reported on this that’s wrong, I can’t even begin to tell you congressman. We will provide you with accurate information as it becomes available.”
It turns out that a different student from Saudi Arabia has been deported for violating his visa. Neither student has been sought in connection with the bombings that killed three and injured 170.
The White House later released a clarifying statement after Duncan’s accusations saying, “These rumors are wrong. This is a totally different individual who is not the individual that was questioned in connection with Boston. And this individual is in custody for reasons unrelated to Boston.”
Martin Michaels
“I was five hours with the police,” said Mohammed Hassan Bada, 20, of Saudi Arabia. “I was scared.” As the city of Boston continues to recover from the twin bombings at the Boston Marathon Monday, police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other intelligence agencies have searched one apartment belonging to a Saudi national injured in Monday’s attacks.
He was a spectator at the marathon, sustaining injuries along with 175 others, but he was the only one who had his apartment searched by authorities conducting an investigation that witnesses say showed “a startling show of force.”
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi nationals, but with no evidence linking the Saudi student to the atrocities on Monday, police stand on shaky ground, likely targeting an innocent man because of his physical appearance, religion and country of origin.
The unnamed Saudi man was first labeled as a suspect in the bombings by Fox News and the New York Post Monday shortly after the attacks. He was reportedly running away from the scene, like the hundreds of others fleeing in terror after explosions rocked the area near the finish line of the race. Police first stopped him in the hoopla because he allegedly “smelled like explosives.”
Immediately, without further inquiry, mainstream news sources labeled the man a suspect. “Investigators have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings,” wrote the New York Post, one of the first news agencies to publish the report. “Law enforcement sources said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.” The Saudi man was being treated for shrapnel wounds sustained from the bomb blast at the finish line of the race.
The leap to label him a suspect remains unclear as police insist that he wasn’t a suspect while he was in the hospital receiving treatment for shrapnel wounds. “Honestly, I don’t know where they’re [Fox News] getting their information from, but it didn’t come from us,” a police spokesman told Talking Points Memo.
After the headlines broke, the report spread like wildfire through Twitter and other social media before it was quickly rescinded after local police reported Wednesday that the Saudi man, who was legally in the U.S. on a student visa, is innocent and no longer a person of interest in the ongoing investigation.
The mix-up could be a case of mistaken identity made by police in the aftermath of the first terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. Others claim that the investigation is discriminatory, wrongly targeting an individual based upon his religion and physical characteristics.
On Wednesday, federal authorities told the Boston Herald that “he’s [the Saudi student] no longer a person of interest,” said Revere Police Lt. Amy O’Hara.
This point is underscored in an official statement made by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, saying, “There is no evidence, according to U.S. authorities, of involvement of any Saudi national in the bombings.”
The investigation of the Saudi student’s apartment also raises red flags for some, claiming that the search was conducted hastily, with no evidence tying the individual to the terrorist attacks.
Mohammed Hassan Bada, 20, also from Saudi Arabia, was at home when a phalanx of officers from the FBI, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and others barged into his Revere, Mass., apartment to conduct an investigation just a few hours after the bombings occurred.
Bada, one of two roommates sharing an apartment with the Saudi man, said that police removed objects from his apartment, but is unsure exactly what they took.
There were also two Boston Police K-9 units, a bomb squad unit, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security investigators and state police assembled at the apartment complex.
“I signed some paper to let them in,” Bada said. Using a translator, police questioned him in Arabic, his native language, for five hours. “I was scared.”