The Daily Caller brings attention to a matter the vast majority of themedia is ignoring …

Media downplay Tsarnaev connection to Muslim student group

From: Daily Caller
By Charles C. Johnson, May 3, 2013

Coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing has ignored admitted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s connection to his college’s Muslim Student Association, a group that has close relations with both the Muslim Brotherhood and a local imam friendly with an al-Qaida operative.

Although a student leader and the mainstream media have downplayed Tsarnaev’s ties to the the group, Tsarnaev associated frequently with the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

The Washington Post on April 27 reported that Tsarnaev, who has admitted his role in the Marathon terrorist bombing to police, played intramural soccer with MSA members, contradicting earlier reports that the U. Mass-Dartmouth student spurned an invitation to join the controversial Muslim Brotherhood-linked student organization.

“For a time, Jahar played on an intramural soccer team composed of students involved with the campus Muslim Student Association,” explained the Post’s Marc Fisher, a fact that has since been missing from coverage.

In fact, Tsarnaev played soccer with the Muslim Student Association nearly every week, according to MSA Secretary Bassel Nasri in an interview with George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer on April 19, 2013. Nasri simply neglected to say they were MSA games. Although Stephanopoulos described Nasri as “a soccer buddy” of Tsarnaev, neither he nor Sawyer mentioned that they were co-religionists and that the soccer games were organized by the Muslim Student Association.

In other words – media failure.

Mr. Johnson continues by reporting the troubling past history of some MSA members:

In fact, several Muslim Student Association students have been brought up on terrorism charges. In April 2012, Muslim Student Association member Tarek Mehanna, who earned a doctorate at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, was sentenced to 17 and a half years for  conspiring to aid al-Qaida. Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki (a.k.a. Omar Hammani), a terrorist leader and former president of the University of South Alabama’s Muslim Students’ Association, was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List in 2012.

The Facebook page of the Muslim Student Association at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth has over one hundred members and routinely advertises speeches and seminars taught by radical imams and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)’s Todd Gallinger, who visited the campus in the days after the Boston bombing.

Mention is made of the U.S. Government labeling CAIR  as one of the many unindicted co-conspirators in a criminal conspiracy to aid Hamas (Holy land Foundation Trial).  The article continues with:

… U. Mass-Dartmouth’s MSA Facebook group’s members repeatedly advertise talks by radical imams like Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston’s Roxbury center. Webb, a convert to Islam who leads the largest mosque in New England, regularly preaches in the Cambridge mosque the two brothers attended.

Webb was an associate of Anwar Awlaki, an Al-Qaeda affiliated preacher killed in 2011 by a drone strike. Two days before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the two imams headlined a fundraiser [pdf] on behalf of Jamil al Amin (a.k.a. H. Rap Brown), who had murdered two police officers. Webb and Awlaki raised $100,000 to pay for Amin’s legal defense.

Full Article: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/03/media-downplay-tsarnaev-connection-to-muslim-student-group/

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COMMENT/ANALYSIS: While all the details regarding the extent of  Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s  involvement with MSA UMass Dartmouth is not currently known, inquires by investigators would be part of logical investigative leads.

An interesting coincidence in relation to the  media response at the UMass campus are the students interviewed.

• April 19, 2013 –  Providence Journal report, Cousins Ahmad Nassri and Bassel Nasri are interviewed and described as “Two fellow students of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth”.
• A CBS Boston video report also featured Ahmad Nassri andBassel Nasri being interviewed regarding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  They opined that Dzhokhar “wasn’t capable” of the bombing and that “something must have happened in the last few weeks” maybe influenced by his brother or on drugs.
• Apr 22 , 2013 –  ABC Boston reports: ”I would say sibling influence is probably a big, big factor of that kind of thing. You’d be surprised at what an older sibling can get a younger sibling to do,” said Bassel Nasri, a friend of Dzhokar Tsarnaev. “We really don’t know how he was coerced, maybe, into doing this. So I’m looking forward to knowing more about this in interviews of him.”
• Apr 22, 2013 – Wall Street Journal article quotes Ahmad Nassri, college friend, several times through the article
• May 2, 2013 – Wall Street Journal article quotes Ahmad Nassri, who played indoor soccer with Mr. Tsarnaev every Monday in New Bedford. “One time I called him rich when he showed up in a BMW, and he was like, ‘No dude, this is my friends’ car,’ ” he said.

In all the above instances and with those referred to in the Daily Caller article, no mention that Ahmad Nassri and Bassel Nasri are President and Secretary, respectively, of the Muslim Student Association of Umass Dartmouth.

It will be interesting to see what additional links develop, including if the three students arrested are involved in the MSA.

While premature to point an accusing finger at MSA-Umass Dartmouth, ignoring the reality of  MSA’s foundation, history and promotion of Islamist ideology along with Boston area Islamic groups, is very naive.