Upon hearing this pitiful news, Elena Teyer, the mother of the wife of Ibrahim Todashev, who was murdered by the FBI in his Florida home in May of 2013, immediately contacted Matanov's attorney Edward Hayden to offer the young man a room in her home in Georgia and volunteered to pay for his transportation there. She has never met the Tsarnaevs nor this man before, but since the murder of her son-in-law she feels strongly, "We are all family now."
In August 2013, Teyer's daughter, Todashev's wife, Reniya Manukyan traveled to Dagestan to visit Zubeidat and Anzor Tsarnaev, Jahar and Tamerlan's parents.
"We cried so much there's just no more tears left," Reniya said about the visit.
Teyer wants to testify in the Tsarnaev trial as a witness against the FBI but her letters to Jahar's attorneys go unanswered. This is despite the fact that government prosecutors added to the case against Tsarnaev a clause implicating his brother Tamerlan in a triple homicide based on an alleged confession Todashev "was about to write down" before the FBI shot him seven times.
"I saw the body. I saw the inside of the apartment where he was killed," she says.
Teyer is determined to fight for justice and for the truth to come out about this concerted government attack on Russo-Muslim immigrants to the US.
"I am recently retired from long term active duty in the US Army. I'm not like these kids [Jahar's friends]. I'm not afraid."
Khairullozhon Matanov, originally from Kyrgyzstan, probably has by now realized that he walked into a trap. When the FBI posted photographs of the Tsarnaev brothers on TV and asked the public to identify them, they already knew who the boys were and where they lived. Local police reported that the FBI already had Tamerlan's home in Cambridge under surveillance.
The FBI seems to have cast a dragnet to lure in anyone who might know the Tsarnaevs, so that they could then ensnare them into false testimony or else prosecute them; therefore creating a false public impression that the FBI had heroically disrupted a local "terror cell."
Matanov believed the Tsarnaev brothers would never have committed the bombing and presumably was hoping to clear their names when he contacted the Braintree, Massachusetts police department and offered to give them whatever information he had, which was limited to their names and addresses, because he had no information whatsoever about the brothers being involved in the bombing. A few days after it happened he had even invited them for dinner at a local restaurant, something you don't normally do if you think a person might be a dangerous criminal hiding from authorities. The police contacted the FBI, who contacted Matanov approximately 24 hours later.
Instead of thanking him for the information, the FBI then started an intense investigation on Matanov. They conducted many interviews with him over the next year or so, in addition to both overt and covert surveillance. The most obvious surveillance was reported to the media by neighbors: an unmanned aircraft circling around his home. The only surveillance FBI Agent Timothy McElroy, who was on the witness stand for the majority of Matanov's bail hearing, admitted to was what he called "bumper log surveillance" - following Matanov around in black, unmarked government vehicles, keeping him in sight at all times. Manatov was also contacted via his attorney and told to stay away from Boston's July 4 and Patriots Day celebrations, to which he complied.
The hearing focused on his money transfers overseas and the fact that he had asked a friend to dispose of some cell phones, knowing the FBI would be on their way.
The majority of the money was sent to his family but there were 15 people in 6 countries whom he wired money to that did not share his last name, some of whom he used false aliases to contact, for example he sent an undisclosed amount of money as Ali Hasan to Kamoliodin Niiazaliev. The defense argued that he operated an illegal business selling stolen cell phones overseas, and that these wire transfers had nothing to do with terrorism. The FBI testimony was deliberately vague and allowed court reporters to insinuate that the purpose of the money transfers was related to terrorism in order to create a media buzz.
Attorney Hayden told Elena Teyer that he will try to find out if Matanov could be released to her home or to that of another person in Massachusetts who volunteered their home, as well as the amount of bail. A commissary account is being opened for Matanov's needs in prison by members of the Free Jahar movement. It is hoped that once he understands that he is not alone, Matanov will stand up and fight for his rights instead of bowing his head in fear.
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