Boston leaders: Black suspect was not shot in back
Police video shows Usaama Rahim threatening officers with large military-style knife
BOSTON (AP) — A knife-wielding black man killed while under surveillance by an anti-terror task force had discussed “committing beheadings” and “harming police officers,” a law enforcement official said Wednesday.
These details of the threat that prompted Boston police and FBI agents to confront Usaama Rahim on a sidewalk in Boston were described as authorities moved swiftly Wednesday to manage public perceptions of the shooting.
Rahim’s family is prominent among Muslims in Boston, where his mother is a nurse at Boston University. His older brother, Ibrahim Rahim, is a scholar known for preaching that violence is anti-Islamic after the Boston marathon bombings.
Ibrahim Rahim initially posted a message on Facebook alleging that police repeatedly shot his brother in the back on Tuesday while calling their father for help. But the imam’s version unraveled Wednesday after police showed their video of the confrontation to community leaders.
Darnell Williams, president of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, said afterward that he could “150 percent corroborate” the police account. The images clearly show that Rahim “was not on a cell phone and was not shot in the back,” Williams said.
Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said officers confronted the suspect because “military and law enforcement lives were at threat.”
Rahim and another suspect, David Wright, both 26, had talked about “committing beheadings” and “harming police officers,” said the law enforcement official, who is familiar with the investigation but not authorized to release details and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Because of this threat, task force members who had been monitoring Rahim around the clock approached him on a sidewalk outside a pharmacy Tuesday morning.
The video, which police have yet to make available publicly, shows that Rahim menaced the officers with a large military-style knife and that they initially backed away before shooting him when he refused to drop it, police said.
Williams said he’s not ready to call the shooting justifiable, and a Boston Muslim leader, Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, said it wasn’t clear from the “inconclusive” video whether police had to use deadly force.
“They might have approached him in a different way,” Faaruuq said.
Usaama Rahim was under investigation after communicating with and spreading Islamic State terror group propaganda online, said US Rep. Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.
“These cases are a reminder of the dangers posed by individuals radicalized through social media,” the Texas Republican said.
Usaama Rahim had been under 24-hour surveillance “for quite a time” and “had some extremism as far as his views,” but “a level of alarm” prompted the task force to try to question him Tuesday, Evans said.
The FBI also arrested David Wright, 26, of Everett, who was scheduled to appear in federal court in Boston Wednesday on undisclosed charges. Wright’s attorney, Jessica Hedges, declined to comment.
Ibrahim Rahim quickly disputed the official account, writing on his Facebook page that his brother had been killed while waiting for a bus.
“He was confronted by three Boston Police officers and subsequently shot in the back three times,” Ibrahim Rahim wrote. “He was on his cellphone with my dear father during the confrontation needing a witness.”
Police said the video shows that officers did not have their weapons drawn when they approached Rahim and that they backed up when he initially lunged at them with the knife.
Authorities quickly showed the video to African-American and Muslim community leaders. The meeting “was all about pulling the community together,” Evans said.
The imam could not be reached for comment Wednesday as he traveled to Boston.
Ibrahim Rahim “is a great guy and preaches a very moderate form of Islam,” said Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, where Usaama Rahim briefly worked as a guard.
After the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, Ibrahim Rahim described Jihadis who promote terror as “hell-bent on Islam’s destruction from within,” and urged fellow Islamic leaders to drive “a mass recall of the rhetoric of hate and to suppress any and all human desire to harm others based on any contrived justification.”
Boston voter registration records describe Rahim as a student. Other records show he applied for a security guard license in Florida in 2011, but didn’t follow through. A spokeswoman said Rahim had worked for CVS since March.
Vali said Usaama Rahim did not regularly pray at the center and did not volunteer there or serve in any leadership positions.
Rahim’s shooting is being investigated by the Suffolk district attorney’s office and the FBI — routine for shootings involving police. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is monitoring them, spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
