There is no indication, however, that the detective asked Kair when or under what circumstances he had last seen Tamerlan. In fact, when Kair’s defense attorney got a transcript of this interview, he discovered that the detective had interrupted Kair’s story of his relationship with Tamerlan.
Matanov also told the detective that he knew that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a wife and daughter but claimed not to know whether they lived with Tamerlan, which Matanov intended to be false, misleading, and to conceal the fact that Matanov knew that Tamerlan Tsarnaev lived with his wife and daughter and that Matanov had even exchanged greetings with Tsarnaev’s wife and played with his daughter while he visited the Tsarnaevs’ residence less than two days previous.
In fact, as defense attorney Edward Hayden pointed out in court a few days after the indictment was filed, the transcript shows Kair saying that he was not sure that Tamerlan’s wife and daughter would still be at Norfolk Street now that Tamerlan was dead.
Matanov also told the detective that he had not “participate[d] with” Tamerlan Tsarnaev at a house of worship since 2011, which Matanov intended to be false, misleading, and to conceal the fact that Matanov had been at a house of worship with Tamerlan at least as recently as August 2012.
That is the last of the lies Kair ostensibly told the Braintree police officer. Then he went home and asked Witness 1 to take some of the illegal cell phones off his hands. The person refused. Then Kair deleted most of the video files he had on his laptop as well as its Internet cache. By doing so, claimed the indictment:
Matanov obstructed the FBI’s determination of his Internet activity during the night of April 18 and the day of April 19, 2013, and the extent to which he shared the suspected bomber’s philosophical justification for violence, among other topics of interest.
There is no allegation in the indictment that Kair was in any way involved with organizing the bombing or with trying to help the brothers evade law enforcement—or that he knew anything that might have altered, influenced, or sped up the investigation. Sharing violent beliefs is not a crime, and neither is trying to hide one’s beliefs. It is also possible that Kair was trying to cover up the fact that he, like most Russian speakers on the planet, watched pirated video.
The FBI did not contact Kair until Saturday afternoon. Over the course of several interviews he told the FBI everything he could recall, including the contents of his conversation with the brothers over dinner the evening of the bombing. Tamerlan had pointed out that no one had taken responsibility for the bombing and this probably meant that it was not al-Qaida, which always made its claim of responsibility within two hours of the act—a patently false assertion. The indictment accused Kair of making a series of contradictory statements in his conversations with the FBI: he had at first omitted the fact that he drove the brothers to the restaurant that night, though he admitted right away that dinner had been his treat. He also made muddled statements about when he finally and fully realized that the Tsarnaevs were the suspects, but the grand jury was certain that he knew when he first looked at the pictures on Thursday evening.
In sum, Kair’s crime appears to amount to having been confused and perhaps scared, and trying to conceal his own petty illegal activity—after voluntarily going to the police with information about the brothers.
IN APRIL 2013, the FBI placed Kair under “overt surveillance”—like Ibragim Todashev, he knew he was constantly being followed and watched. He got a lawyer. In early May, Kair apparently decided to see if he could drive crazily enough to shake his FBI tail. The following day, his lawyer relayed the FBI’s request to drive more carefully; Kair complied. Just before the Fourth of July, the lawyer relayed the FBI’s request that Kair stay away from any celebrations (“The city was on edge,” Special Agent Timothy McElroy offered later in court by way of explanation); Kair complied. Just before Patriots’ Day 2014, the lawyer relayed the FBI’s request that Kair leave the city for the holiday; Kair complied. But once the anniversary of the bombing had passed, things appeared to get back to normaclass="underline" Kair began making plans for his new export-import business, and he even let his relationship with his lawyer lapse. Then he gave Amir a ride to the federal prison. Two days later, he was in jail himself.
He was wearing an orange jumpsuit when he was led into a courtroom at the federal courthouse in Boston for his detention hearing and arraignment on June 4, 2014. A bailiff removed Kair’s handcuffs once he had waddled over to the defense table; the shackles stayed on. His court-appointed defense lawyer, Edward Hayden, ran through the indictment, pointing out the inconsistencies, the absurdities, and most important, the absence of a description of anything that could be construed as a crime.
The prosecution stressed that Kair was facing up to twenty-eight years in prison—eight for lying and twenty for obstructing justice—and this made him a flight risk. Kair speaks seven languages and has “significant ties outside the country,” making it even more likely that he would flee, argued Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Riley. Plus, he said, the defendant would probably be deported if convicted—all the more reason to try to leave the country before trial if he were released on bail.
The judge noted that Kair could not actually be deported to his country of origin because the United States had granted him political asylum. At least one of the prosecutor’s arguments was thus rejected out of hand. It began to seem possible that this was that rare—perhaps unique—occasion when a noncitizen in a terrorism case would be released on bail. Maybe all the defense attorney had to do now was ask for it.
“At this point I cannot find reason to argue against detention,” said Hayden instead. “I don’t see any place for him to go.” Kair had been behind bars for less than a week, but his life had fallen apart: his landlord had already evicted him and his employer had fired him, revoking his lease on the cab. With no home, no job, and no family in the United States, Kair was now committed to “voluntary detention without prejudice” in county jail.
In a few weeks, the women of the Free Jahar movement organized a place for Kair to stay in the Boston area—and if the judge would allow him to leave the district, Elena Teyer had volunteered to house him in Savannah indefinitely. But the judge rejected this proposal, and Kair’s detention stopped being “voluntary.” He was scheduled to face trial no sooner than the summer of 2015.
Twelve
WHAT WILL WE KNOW?
“Why are you writing this book?” Mohammed Gadzhiev, Tamerlan’s friend and deputy head of the Union of the Just, asked me. We had spent most of a day talking, and the conversation had taken a few twists. Gadzhiev had been by turns condescending, engaged, and intimidating. Now, in the evening, we were drinking black tea at a large wooden table outdoors at a roadside café on the outskirts of Makhachkala, and Gadzhiev signaled it was time I came clean about my agenda. Specifically, he wanted to know why I had asked comparatively few questions about the celebrity martyrs whom Tamerlan had been rumored to have tried to contact in Dagestan. Because, I said, I saw no credence to the rumors—an impression my interlocutor clearly shared. I had asked him many detailed questions about his own time with Tamerlan and conversations they had had, and what he was asking me now was this: If I was not chasing the story of the great Dagestan-based terrorist conspiracy that radicalized Tamerlan Tsarnaev, then what story was I writing?