DOJ Cites Bizarre Reason to Deny Access to (convicted Boston bomber) Tsarnaev Info

On the grounds that it wants to protect the privacy of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has stymied attempts by WhoWhatWhy to find out if Tsarnaev is still being held under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). SAMs are a repressive type of confinement that severely limits one’s ability to communicate with anybody outside of one’s prison cell.

DOJ claimed that without Tsarnaev’s consent, revealing such information about the prisoner’s status “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of [his] personal privacy.” This was in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by WhoWhatWhy, seeking updated details of Tsarnaev’s confinement.

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Given the legal rationale for SAMs, the government’s determination to keep Tsarnaev incommunicado seems self-contradictory, since the FBI has repeatedly maintained that Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan (who was killed in a police shoot-out) were not connected to any wider conspiracy. Hence, by the government’s own admission, no confederates remain “out there” to whom Dzhokhar could transmit terror instructions.

The attorney general’s denial of our request, citing Tsarnaev’s “personal privacy,”seemed a little strange. But what happened next was downright Kafkaesque.

http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/04/21/doj-cites-bizarre-reason-deny-whowhatwhy-access-tsarnaev-info/