Robel Phillipos is charged with lying to federal investigators after he and others went to Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s room after Phillipos recognized his friend on the videos released by the FBI in the days following the marathon terrorist attack. He did not call the police to report that he recognized the bombing suspect as his buddy. A shouted question from a reporter yesterday as to why he didn’t alert authorities is heard at the end of this interview with his lawyers (as they walked away).
From the Daily Caller:
Robel Phillipos, the 19-year old classmate of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev who was charged with lying to federal investigators, gained release from custody with the help of a number of supportive affidavits from Boston-area academics and humanitarians close to his mother, according to a copy of his bond request obtained by the Daily Caller.
Mom is Ethiopian refugee who has important Boston “humanitarian” friends:
Phillipos’ mother Genet Bekele — an Ethiopian refugee who holds a master’s degree in social work from Boston University and worked for a refugee resettlement agency and as the director of the emergency shelter at the nonprofit battered women’s shelter Transition House — provided an affidavit in support of her son.
Transition House executive director Risa Mednick also provided an affidavit supporting Phillipos, claiming that she knew Phillipos’ mother when they both worked at Transition House and on the Cambridge Domestic Violence Task Force. Mednick claimed that Phillipos had a “surprisingly nuanced understanding of how social issues impact families and youth.”
Wellesley College art professor Salem Mekuria also provided an affidavit defending Phillipos.
“Robel’s mother is one of the most humanitarian and generous beings I know. Having experienced hardship as a refugee after escaping from an oppressive military regime, she has been working tirelessly to help others with similar experiences,” Mekuria said in an affidavit.
Martha Goldberg, a sponsored programs administrator at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, also defended Phillipos and stated that many employees of the International Institute of Boston knew the young man.
“I met Genet fifteen years ago as a coworker at the International Institute of Boston. I knew all about Robel as she would talk about him and many of the other staff members knew him. We were all proud of him because he was a really sweet, smart kid,” Goldberg testified in her affidavit. [Smart?—ed]
For my critics! I do have sympathy for Mom!
Readers, if you are having trouble finding the International Institute of Boston that’s because it is now “doing business as” the International Institute of New England. It is another of the 300 plus subcontractors resettling refugees and providing services to “new Americans.” I believe they are still a subcontractor of USCRI (remember them here yesterday).
Some of these contractors (top nine who have a monopoly) and subcontractors have changed their names over the years, why? I assume it’s because somehow they got in trouble with federal grant money, but who knows, it could be innocent name changes. Here in 2009, I reported that USCRI itself changed its name. In any case it makes it harder for the average taxpaying citizen to keep up with them!
All of our posts on the Boston Marathon Bombing are archived here.