The Brothers (18 page)

In May 2013, someone who claimed to be a resident of the Watertown neighborhood where the gun battle between law enforcement and the Tsarnaev brothers occurred posted a video on YouTube that, he wrote, showed the apprehension of Tamerlan—alive—by the police and his saying
“podstava,”
the Russian word for “setup,” as he was detained. I watched the video several times—it was darkness, flashing lights, sirens—but I was unable to discern someone being detained or to hear anyone say
“podstava.”
If Tamerlan had indeed said that word at any point, it could have meant anything from “I was set up” to simply a rueful interjection, as though life itself had engineered the setup. But the interpretation of the video became gospel among followers of the numerous “Free Jahar” groups on social networks: here was evidence that the brothers themselves believed they had been set up.

Elena became part of the online community of Jahar’s defenders. The many online groups, with a combined membership in the thousands, were an odd conglomeration of left-wing doubters, right-wing conspiracy theorists, young women with crushes on Jahar, and middle-aged women aghast at the too-apparent barbarity of keeping a young man alive in order to kill him after a trial the outcome of which was preordained. Early on, the movement had been dominated by energetic young people intent on exposing a truth that departed dramatically from the official version of events. In the summer of 2013, for example, I interviewed a thirty-one-year-old Truther with a shaved head and tattoos on most of his exposed skin who had moved to Boston from Las Vegas to conduct his own investigation. Over time, men like him switched their focus to other government conspiracies, and middle-aged women driven primarily by compassion gradually took over. Elena fit in well among them, and the story of the killing of Ibragim naturally became the centerpiece of the movement’s narrative of the obstruction of truth and the lack of justice. Elena now devoted herself to the movement fully.

In December 2014, she flew to Boston, barely scraping together enough money for the ticket and one night in a hotel, to attend Jahar’s final pretrial hearing—the first time he would be brought to court since pleading not guilty in July 2013. As the brief proceedings were wrapping up, she shouted out in Russian: “Dzhokhar, there are people here who love you! We pray for you and support you! We know you are innocent!” She told me later she had decided ahead of time she would scream in Russian “so he would know it wasn’t someone mocking him.” As the U.S. marshals moved in to usher Elena out of the courtroom, she screamed at them, too: “I am an American citizen and I have the right to say what I think!”

EVERYONE IS GOING TO JAIL

A
fter he pulled off his shirt, as instructed, outside the apartment door, Azamat was frisked, handcuffed, shackled, walked a few paces through a thicket of men in SWAT gear, and shoved into the backseat of a police car. A few moments later a man in civilian clothes thrust his head into the car. He was in his forties, broad-shouldered, with close-cropped gray hair and plain white good looks.

“Where the fuck is Jahar?” he shouted.

“I don’t know,” said Azamat. “The news says he is in Watertown.”

“Don’t you fucking lie to me!” barked the agent. Afterward, he shouted something else about Jahar’s life being over and Azamat’s being in danger.

After about an hour just sitting in the cruiser while men in SWAT gear ran around and in and out of the building, shouting and radioing, Azamat was driven a short distance in New Bedford. He no longer knew where Dias and Bayan were. An officer got him out of the car, unshackled him, and told him to stand next to the vehicle. Azamat stood. People in uniform and in civilian clothes continued to run in and out of the building. They had arrived at the state police barracks, where the FBI had temporarily set up shop that afternoon, nearly certain that Jahar would be captured at the Carriage Drive apartment. It was another hour before someone led Azamat into the building, into a tiny, windowless room that was almost completely empty—even the shelves against one of the walls were barren, save for a recording device that sat on one of them. The device, however, would not be used, because the FBI records interviews only with subjects who are in custody, which Azamat was not.

There were two agents in the room, an olive-skinned man and a pale woman. They were both small—they did not tower over Azamat like the man who had shouted at him. Although Azamat was still handcuffed and shirtless, he must have felt a bit less scared—Special Agent Sara Wood later testified that he was relaxed and smiling. He asked to go to the bathroom. The agents said he could not, just yet. He said he was bursting and would go in his shorts if they did not let him use the bathroom. One of the agents said that he could go if he signed a form first. The form said that Azamat was agreeing to talk to the FBI voluntarily and was waiving his right to an attorney. Azamat signed—he would have signed that anyway—and then Special Agent Farbod Azad, the olive-skinned man, took him to the bathroom.

When Agent Azad brought Azamat back, they began talking. It was just before eight on Friday evening. It was almost half past four in the morning on Saturday when Azamat got home. In the intervening hours, Agent Wood, the pale woman, asked most of the questions, and Agent Azad took notes. Azamat answered questions about Jahar, who not long after the questioning began was found in the boat in Watertown, though Azamat would not know about this until later. Sometimes one of the agents would leave the room for a while. At one point Azamat was so cold that he begged the agents to find him a shirt. Agent Wood went to look for one but returned empty-handed. Apparently, in the entire police barracks filled with people many of whom had come in from other cities (Agent Wood herself had driven up from New York that morning), no one had a spare shirt, T-shirt, sweater, or jacket to lend to Azamat. Agent Wood later testified that Azamat shook violently but not from the cold: it was nerves. She said that the shakes began when the questioning brought them to Thursday night and the friends’ visit to Jahar’s dorm room. Azamat told the agents that they had taken a computer, his own Beats headphones, and a backpack. He also told them that in the morning, once he learned that Jahar had been identified as one of the bombers, he had told Dias that he needed to remember where he had disposed of the backpack.

“Why?” asked Agent Wood. She later testified that Azamat shrugged in response.

“Why did you throw out the backpack?”

“I don’t know.” In Russian, even more than in American culture, “I don’t know” can mean many things other than simply pleading ignorance—including “I don’t know what to say” and “I don’t know how to explain it to you.”

“Between his shaking and indicating that they threw the backpack out, it was clear we weren’t getting the full story,” Agent Wood later told a jury in federal court. “As I began to confront him, he continued to say, ‘I don’t know.’ Finally, he didn’t respond, but his shoulders slumped and his body language changed. I lowered my voice and leaned across the table. ‘What was in the backpack?’ He responded, ‘The stuff you use on New Year’s.’”

Agent Wood did not understand.

“Petarda,”
said Azamat, trying a Russian word. No match.

He tried to use a translation app on his iPhone, as he had several times during the conversation, but it did not know the word, either. He gestured with his hands and tried to imitate the sound of fireworks: “Wee, wee, wee, boom!” Agent Wood finally got it.

On the fourth iteration, Azamat’s list of things removed from Jahar’s room included: the laptop, the headphones, the backpack with hollow fireworks, and a brown ashtray, which he also had not mentioned earlier. He succeeded in omitting what he most wanted to conceal, which was the bag of marijuana. And he still did not know where Dias had thrown the backpack.

Before Azamat mentioned the fireworks, but after he had handed the agents his phone and told them the password and gone through and translated for them the text messages he had exchanged with Dias, he asked if he should speak to his consulate. Agent Wood got the number of the Kazakh consulate and let Azamat use the landline, but it was half past ten at night and he got voice mail.

A bit after midnight, the agents told Azamat that he was free to go. He had no idea how to get home: Dias had also been taken into custody, and at any rate, Azamat had no phone service. He put his head on the lone desk in the little room and fell asleep.

The person who roused him was the big man from the previous afternoon. He was Agent John Walker, and he was directing this part of the investigation.

“I’m beginning to think I am being held here against my will,” said Azamat.

Agent Walker told him it was nothing like that—he was free to go. In fact, Agent Walker would drive him. When they arrived at Carriage Drive, Dias was there with two other FBI agents. They assembled around the table—the one at which Dias, Azamat, and Bayan had sat twelve hours earlier waiting for the FBI. Now it was the FBI, Dias, and Azamat, standing. The laptop, the ashtray, and the baseball hat sat on the table. One of the agents spotted the red hat.

“Is that Jahar’s?” he asked.

The boys nodded.

“We want that hat,” said the agent.

“I don’t know, I kind of like the way it looks on me,” said Dias, grabbing the hat and putting it on his head.

Azamat quickly tore the hat off his friend’s head and handed it to the agent.

The agents searched the apartment—Azamat had signed a consent form for that, too—and left, taking with them what they had found of Jahar’s stuff. When they were gone, Azamat asked Dias where he had thrown out the backpack.

“In the dumpster,” said Dias.

“You idiot,” said Azamat.

•   •   •

ROBEL DID NOT SEE
the men in SWAT gear lay siege to 69A Carriage Drive, and he did not see his friends being led out of the building at gunpoint, in handcuffs and shackles. He had known to get as far away as possible from that place. After Azamat drove him to campus so he could dump his bag with the marijuana in it and they returned to Carriage Drive, Robel said, “The media are going to be here soon,” and got to work finding a ride out of New Bedford. He got hold of Quan Le Phan, a former roommate. He probably did not have to explain why he had to get away from the Kazakhs’ apartment: by this time, all of UMass knew that Jahar had been identified as one of the bombers. Quan had to leave campus anyway because the dorms were being evacuated, but Robel bombarded him with messages urging him to hurry until, less than half an hour later, Quan took Robel with him to his parents’ house in Worcester, about seventy miles to the northwest.

Just after three in the afternoon, Robel got a text from Azamat: “Policemen are coming to our apartment . . .” and less then a minute later: “They are looking for you . . .” Robel responded, “Tell them we left because of campus lockdown and are coming back when they tell us to.”

Robel’s strategy must have been to try to make himself invisible while also appearing cooperative. He knew the police would come to Carriage Drive, but he figured that if he avoided being spotted by them and especially if he made it inconvenient enough to try to get him, maybe the police would forget about him. There is, however, no such thing as being too inconveniently located for FBI agents conducting an investigation. Two officers—an FBI agent named Dwight Schwader and a county police detective named David Earle, who was also assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, one of a hundred such interagency groups run by FBI offices around the country—drove to Worcester. They asked Robel, Quan, and Quan’s roommate Jim Li, who had gone with Quan and Robel to Quan’s house from Dartmouth, to meet in the Price Chopper parking lot. The boys came and then took turns walking across the lot from their car to the officers’ SUV, getting in, and answering questions. Before letting them into the vehicle, the officers, who were wearing SWAT gear, stood each of the boys against the SUV and patted them down thoroughly.

Robel’s interview lasted a couple of hours, and just another two hours later, he was already feeling cavalier about it.

“It was kind of funny,” he texted at 1:53 in the morning to a friend named Elohe Dereje, an aspiring actress and model in Maryland. “They asked me what I was doing all day when I was hanging out with people. I told them smoking on so many occasions that they just started to laugh.”

A minute later, he added, “They grilled me for 2 hours straight.”

Elohe responded:

LMAOO WHAT?? YOU DID NOTTT . . .
LIKE WHERE THEY INTERROGATE YOU?

THEY HAD TO TAKE YOU?

I’M NOT PLAYING, THEY INTERROGATED
ME IN A PARKING LOT IN THEIR CAR

THESE GUYS ONLY CARED FOR
THE BOMBS AND GUNS

WOW, SO DID YOU FIND OUT
WHY THEY DID WHAT THEY DID?

WHY HIS BROTHER BOMBED
THE MARATHON?

NOPE, NOTHING SO FAR.
THEY SAID IF THE GUY DOESN’T TRY
TO PLEAD NOT GUILTY MORE PEOPLE
WON’T INTERROGATE ME

It was less than twenty-four hours since the brothers had been identified, but the narrative had already taken hold: it was the older brother who had bombed the marathon.

Later, when the officers who interviewed Robel were cross-examined in court, it would become clear that the interview had not been all that funny. At one point, Agent Schwader asked for Robel’s phone, and Robel placed it on the center console of the car. The agent went through his text messages, including the ones he had gotten from Dias the evening before: “Come to Jahar’s!” and again “Jahar!” But Robel kept saying that he did not remember anything about going to Jahar’s room, and his repetitive recollections of his numerous pot-smoking sessions served as his explanations both for how he had spent the day and for why he did not remember anything but the smoking. Agent Schwader thought he was stonewalling. Among other things Agent Schwader yelled at him was, “Maybe you are their bitch and you stayed outside,” when Dias and Azamat went in. Robel still insisted that he did not remember going to Jahar’s room.

It was not until after the officers allowed Robel, Quan, and Jim to go back to Quan’s parents’ house that the agents at the New Bedford police barracks got Azamat to talk in detail about Dias’s search of Jahar’s dorm room. So a couple of hours after Robel had relaxed enough to start bragging in text messages about his interrogation, the agents showed up at Quan’s house. They said they needed to talk to Robel. It was four in the morning.

They talked for about forty minutes. They studied his phone again. Robel still insisted that he did not remember going to Jahar’s.

The next day, Robel got a call from Michael Dukakis, the almost eighty-year-old former governor and 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, with whom Robel’s mother was on friendly terms. The old man said Robel’s mother had called him, worried sick because she had not heard from her son in two days. So Dukakis tried calling, perhaps hoping that Robel would answer out of respect—or because he was avoiding only his mother’s calls. And indeed, Robel answered. He told Dukakis that he was so confused he was not even sure what he had told the investigators so far. Dukakis must have told him to go home, because on Saturday both Robel and Jim, whose parents also lived in Boston, left Worcester and returned to their families.

•   •   •

BACK AT CARRIAGE DRIVE,
Dias and Azamat assessed their situation. They seemed to be out of the woods. They had not been arrested, they had given the FBI Jahar’s things except for the backpack, and with Jahar himself having been caught, maybe the FBI did not need the backpack anymore. Dias and Azamat did not know where Bayan was, but they assumed the officers must have let her go early: after all, she had not gone to Jahar’s with them, and anyway, she was a girl. They could sleep—they had not done much of that in a while.

They came for Dias and Azamat in the afternoon. Both were told they were being arrested for visa violations. “This may be the first time Immigration makes a house call over a student-visa violation,” one of Azamat’s defense attorneys, Nicholas Wooldridge, would later say at trial. “And the FBI is with them! This may be the first time the FBI makes a house call over a student-visa violation.” Wooldridge was almost certainly wrong; with arresting people on visa-violation grounds having become one of the most important law enforcement tools after September 11, there had probably been many such joint “house calls.”

When Azamat saw Agent Walker, he rushed to tell him what he had found out—that Dias had thrown the backpack in the dumpster. He also said he remembered that the garbage had been picked up the previous afternoon.

Dias and Azamat were taken to Boston, to the Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr., Federal Building, a 1980s stack of glass and concrete bands that houses a variety of government agencies, including a number of Homeland Security offices. Dias and Azamat were questioned again. Then they were booked and taken to county jail. They still did not have lawyers.