Usaama Rahim: questions remain over terrorism links of man killed by police. Will the true story come out?

2015-06-06T17:55:43-04:00

The family of Usaama Rahim, the 26-year-old man who was shot dead by law enforcement officers in Boston earlier this week, have publicly accepted in its broadest outlines the police version of what happened.

Rahim was shot in the chest, not in the back, the family agrees. And he was not shot while waiting for a bus, as one of his brothers originally said.

But many areas of disagreement remain, beginning with the question of whether Rahim truly represented a terrorist threat, and whether he represented enough of a threat on the morning he died that officers “had to take a life”, as police commissioner William Evans put it.

In a city where prosecutions in the terrorist attack on the 2013 Boston Marathon are still playing out, the announcement by police on Tuesday that officers had shot dead a man who was the target of a counter-terrorism surveillance operation set off speculation in the media that a whole network of terrorists had been uncovered, or that Rahim was part of an Isis sleeper cell.

Usaama Rahim © Provided by Guardian News Usaama Rahim
No evidence has emerged to support either notion. Police have said they have evidence that Rahim visited Isis propaganda sites online, and in transcripts of recorded calls Rahim appears to be mulling an attack of some kind, referring to beheadings and saying he is “going to go after them … those boys in blue”, in apparent reference to the police.

Family members have called for calm and for a full investigation, but they have also challenged the law enforcement interpretation of Rahim’s words. Snatches of dialogue from a few calls do not represent who Rahim was, they say, and in any case the words did not warrant his death.

Rahim was buried by his family in a private ceremony on Friday.

“We’re patriotic, and we’re loyal, and we’re proud citizens of this country,” an older brother, Imam Ibrahim Rahim, told WBUR radio in Boston on Friday. “And we’re Bostonians, we’re proud of that fact. And that’s who Usaama was.”

After writing an incendiary Facebook post claiming Usaama Rahim had been shot in the back, Ibrahim Rahim withdrew the accusation through a lawyer and expressed solidarity with the city. Emerging from the district attorney’s office on Thursday, following a viewing by family members of a video of Usaama Rahim’s killing, the older brother spoke briefly to reporters.

“Boston strong,” he said, invoking the motto that emerged after the Boston Marathon attack in 2013. “God bless America.”

“The family members were clearly grief-stricken by the visuals, and to be expected,” Rahim later told WBUR. “I love my brother and to see that was difficult to watch.

“The narrative that is there about Usaama is problematic, and it is troubling to the family who knows the son and the brother and the uncle and the husband.”

In contrast, police have projected assurance that they had tracked, and ultimately killed, a dangerous, would-be terrorist. A local lawmaker said on Thursday that the FBI had been tracking Rahim for years.

“I’m not sure what red-flagged him, but I think it went back – the FBI was looking at him going back to 2012,” Congressman Stephen Lynch, who represents south Boston, told the Boston Globe. A joint terrorism taskforce joined the surveillance of Rahim a year ago.

Evans, the police commissioner, said on Wednesday that the threat posed by Rahim grew sufficiently urgent that members of the task force, including police officers and at least one FBI agent, decided to confront Rahim in Roslindale in south Boston on Tuesday morning.

“This guy required 24/7 surveillance,” Evans said. “The level of our concern rose to the level that we needed to question him. I think we never anticipated what his reaction would be.”

Related: Pamela Geller was target of alleged Boston terrorist, police confirm

Video of the incident shows four or five officers approaching Rahim, and then abruptly back-stepping away from him, according to multiple people who have seen it. Court records document an earlier purchase by Rahim from Amazon.com of three large knives. A knife was recovered at the scene where Rahim died, and officers said he had threatened them with it. One police officer and one FBI agent fired on Rahim, police said.

One community member to have seen the video, however, Islamic Society of Boston spokesman Abdullah Faaruuk, said “the video is inconclusive”.

“We couldn’t see clearly whether there was a knife or not,” Faaruuk told a news conference on Wednesday. “We can’t be clear as to what transpired.”

Police decided to hold screenings of the video, they said, in hopes of heading off rumors that could have threatened to sow the kind of widespread unrest in Boston that many American cities have seen following police killings in the last year.

The Rahim family has echoed the police call for calm, but appended a call for justice.

“We’re just a typical middle-class American family,” Ibrahim Rahim told WBUR. “It just so happens that our religion may be a little different.”
The family of Usaama Rahim, the 26-year-old man who was shot dead by law enforcement officers in Boston earlier this week, have publicly accepted in its broadest outlines the police version of what happened.

Rahim was shot in the chest, not in the back, the family agrees. And he was not shot while waiting for a bus, as one of his brothers originally said.

But many areas of disagreement remain, beginning with the question of whether Rahim truly represented a terrorist threat, and whether he represented enough of a threat on the morning he died that officers “had to take a life”, as police commissioner William Evans put it.

In a city where prosecutions in the terrorist attack on the 2013 Boston Marathon are still playing out, the announcement by police on Tuesday that officers had shot dead a man who was the target of a counter-terrorism surveillance operation set off speculation in the media that a whole network of terrorists had been uncovered, or that Rahim was part of an Isis sleeper cell.
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Usaama Rahim: questions remain over terrorism links of man killed by police

The Boston police commissioner said investigators ‘had to take a life’ this week, but little information has been given regarding what terror threat he posed

Response by Capt Seid Waddell made Jun 6 at 2015 8:36 PM

2015-06-06T20:36:35-04:00

If it is true that Usaama Rahim had been on a terrorist watch list, had made threats to behead police, and came at the police with a knife capable of accomplishing the task, it is difficult to imagine how any imagined context could make the police action in killing him unreasonable.

Also, his family initially lied claiming that the police had shot him in the back as he was waiting for a bus - even though the autopsy and video of the confrontation showed the opposite. It would appear reasonable to flag the family for the terrorist watch list as well.

What valid questions remain? It was a reasonable shooting, if the evidence has been reported accurately.

Response by PO3 Stephen West made Jun 15 at 2015 4:16 PM

2015-06-15T16:16:51-04:00

They all lie right out of the gate. The guy had the same type of knife used to behead Americans. No great loss, another terrorist down.