After the 2013 Bmb’s. During the manhunt in Watertown, Saudi student Ahmed Al-Ruwaili who was studying English in Boston, suddenly found himself mistaken for the suspect.
At the time Ahmed was studying English at a language institute in Boston. He lived with an American family and several other international students.
On Thursday evening, while Ahmed and his roommates were in the house watching the news to understand what was happening outside, the entire area was under heavy security lockdown. The neighborhood was under a strict shelter-in-place order, with tactical teams patrolling every street.
Suddenly the silence was broken at the back of the house. Believing a suspect might be inside a team of nearly 15 tactical officers breached the door. They stormed in with weapons drawn, shouting for everyone to stay down and not move.
The homeowner an elderly woman had come out of her room annoyed by the sound of the door being broken, but she quickly found herself surrounded by security officers along with the rest of the people in the house.
Everyone was ordered to sit on the ground and put their hands on their heads. Then the officers began searching them one by one.
At first, all the students were restrained, but the police’s focus soon turned toward Ahmed alone.
One of the officers took out a photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and placed it in front of Ahmed, saying sharply:
Ahmed immediately replied:
“No, this is not my photo.”
But the officer insisted:
“When was this picture taken?”
Later, Ahmed said the resemblance between him and the suspect was striking, especially the thick curly hair and similar facial features. When he first saw the suspect’s photo on TV before the raid, he was shocked by how much it looked like him.
When the officer showed him the photo during the interrogation and asked, “Isn’t this you?”, Ahmed calmly replied:
“Yes, he looks very much like me… but it’s not me.”
Then the interrogation continued in a harsh tone, and he was bombarded with questions about:
- His brother and where he was
- His brother’s date of birth
- The last time he had contacted him
- The date he entered the United States
- The name of the institute where he studied
While the rest of his roommates were brought back inside the house after their restraints were removed, Ahmed remained restrained outside alone. After some time, additional support forces arrived, bringing the number of security personnel to around 50 officers.
The weather was extremely cold, and Ahmed was standing outside barefoot, wearing only light clothing.
They asked him to walk up and down the street so they could film the way he walked, and they took dozens of photos of his face from different angles.
At one moment, one officer ordered him to get into the police car, but a higher-ranking officer intervened after reviewing the information and said:
“There’s no need to put him in the car.”
So they brought him back to the house and removed his restraints, and continued questioning him for another half hour before leaving the place, leaving behind the house door broken.
After the raid ended, Ahmed and his roommates were in a state of severe shock. The first thing they did was perform ablution and pray after that difficult night.
But the story did not end there.
Later, agents from the (FBI) returned and questioned everyone again, one by one. They asked them where they had been at the time of the two explosions.
Ahmed explained that he had been at the institute at that time, so they asked him for precise details such as:
- The name of the teacher in that class
- The topic of the lesson
- The number of subjects he studied that day
He assured them that they would find his information correct if they contacted the institute administration.
Despite the fear the American family experienced during the raid, they tried to defend Ahmed in front of the police because they knew him well and he had been living with them for some time.
Later the homeowner was shocked when she learned that the report that led to the raid had come from one of the neighbors in the area, who thought Ahmed was the suspect because of the strong resemblance in their facial features.
After the incident ended, the family apologized to Ahmed for what happened inside their home and tried to calm him and help him, even with repairing the door that had been broken during the raid.
Ahmed later mentioned that the family treated him honorably and that he felt some sense of safety because they stood by his side.
Ahmed says that he and his roommates were in the house watching the news while the area was under security lockdown. At the time they were in the kitchen talking, and everyone was tense because of what was happening outside.
He says: I only went out to see who had opened the front door, but as soon as I stepped outside I found security officers in front of me. I lowered my head for a moment and saw that my whole body had laser dots from their weapons, and they were shouting at me: “Raise your hands!” “Don’t move!” and “Get down on the ground!” He says he didn’t even know whom to respond to because of the intense fear.
So he lay down on the ground, was restrained, and taken out to the street.
The weather was extremely cold, and he was wearing light clothes without shoes.
They asked him to walk to the end of the street and come back while they filmed him, then they made him sit near the police car for long hours.
Ahmed says he remained held in the street from one o’clock in the morning until nine-thirty in the morning, until the real suspect was later arrested.
He also mentioned that some police officers treated him harshly, and one of them even said to him:
“Are you stupid?” when he did not know his brother’s date of birth.
But when FBI agents arrived, their approach was kinder. One of them even tried to reassure him and said that he knew Saudi Arabia and mentioned several cities there.
After the investigation ended and his fingerprints were taken, Ahmed was allowed to return home. Exhausted, he immediately fell asleep.
The next day he contacted the Saudi consulate in New York. After explaining what had happened, they kept in contact to check on him. Soon after, Ahmed temporarily moved out of the American family’s house and stayed with a friend.
It was later revealed that the reason for the raid was a report from one of the neighbors in the area. She had been closely following the news, and photos of the suspect Dzhokhar were spreading across all television channels.
When she saw Ahmed moving near the house window or in the garden she felt intense fear because of the strong resemblance between him and the suspect especially the thick hair and young face. Also her knowledge that the house was occupied by Saudi students increased her suspicions in those tense moments after the bombings.
Therefore, she called the police and reported that a person who looked like the suspect was in the neighboring house. Since the area was already under strict security operations, the police treated the report very seriously, so they raided the house with force and broke the door during the search.
(pic + clip of Ahmed shown, what do u think does he look like Jahar?)
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