ANARCHIST CELL HUNTED BY FBI FOR THREE UNSOLVED NYC BOMBINGS INCLUDING TIMES SQUARE
The FBI suspects Anarchists are behind a trio of unsolved New York City bombings that hit the British Consulate in 2005, the Mexican Consulate in 2007 and the US Military's recruitment office in Times Square in 2008. Now the FBI is upping its cash reward for info to a quarter-million dollars.
Alleged Anarchist bomb exploding in Times Square, Mar. 6, 2008. Photo Credit: FBI.
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The FBI's bounty on an Anarchist cell allegedly behind a Times Square bombing and two other unsolved New York City bombings is now a quarter-million dollars.
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the suspect or suspects," it said Mar. 7. They "may be connected to two other unsolved bombings in New York City—one at the British Consulate in 2005 and the other at the Mexican Consulate in 2007."
"The case remains a top priority," the FBI added. "There's no statute of limitations."
The bombing spree started at a midtown Manhattan office building May 5, 2005, targeted the Mexican Consulate Oct. 26, 2007 and ended in Times Square at the US Armed Forces recruiting center Mar. 6, 2008. All three bombs were placed by a bicycle-riding bomber, all three were placed between 3:00 am and 4:00 am, and all three were primitive, black-powder fueled devices, the FBI says.
All three bombs caused property damage alone. No one was hurt, much less killed. No one or group claimed responsibility for any of the bombings.
The bombings appear to be politically motivated. The midtown office building blasted in 2005 included both the British Consulate (an important American ally in the then-raging Iraq War) and a corporation known for selling bulldozers to Israel-bulldozers the Zionist state uses to demolish Palestinian homes, according to Reuters.
The Oct. 26 bombing of the Mexican Consulate in 2007, many believe, was retaliation for the murder of journalist Brad Will by Mexican police. Will was known for reporting on protests and rebellions. He was in Oaxaca documenting a peasant revolt when he was shot to death by plainclothes police Oct. 27, 2005. Will died with his camera in his hand, filming his own assassination, The Indypendent reported.
Brad Will and his suspected killers. Photo Credits: Brad Will, the Indypendent.org
Of the three bombings, the 2008 Times Square bombing has received the most attention. That's partly because of its location at the Cross Roads of the World, its military recruitment center target and the date. Mar. 6, 1970 was the day three militant radicals with the Weather Underground accidentally blew up themselves and their Greenwich Village safehouse while making bombs allegedly intended to kill American soldiers.
48 years later, the Times Square bike bomber slowly peddled up to the small, stand-alone recruitment center on a traffic island in the middle of Times Square just after 3:30 am Mar. 6, surveillance video released by the FBI shows. The bomber dismounted, leaned his bike against a nearby railing and casually spent the next two or so minutes preparing a small, homemade bomb then lighting its fuse.
As the bomber worked, yellow cabs passed in waves while light bloomed and faded from the giant electronic billboards illuminating Times Square. A total of five pedestrians follow in the bombers' path from the north but on foot. They walk down the same island that the recruiting station, and the bomber, is on. One of them stops feet from the bomber at the moment he lights the bomb's fuse. The burning fuse can be seen as a white glow in the video.
The pedestrian quickly crossed the street, while the bomber gets back on his bike and pedals away in the opposite direction.
The pattern of movement of the pedestrians suggest at least some of them may have been acting as look-outs for the bomber.
Surveillance video captured the bomber casually riding southeast through midtown Manhattan while their bomb explodes in a puff of smoke, shattering glass and bending steel but injuring no one. The bomber abandoned the bike in a dumpster on East 38th Street. Police found the blue Ross 10-speed the next morning.
“This is the perfect bomber’s bike,” Tom Sachs, a Lower East Side artist who collected old 10-speeds, told the New York Times’ Colin Moynihan. “Unconsidered and disposable.”
Blue Ross 10-speed bicycle used by Times Square bomber. Photo Credit: FBI.
The lo-fi bombings recalled a violent-but weirdly almost innocent-time in New York City long before 9/11.
The City was a battleground for various political groups using it as a stage to attract international attention to their disparate causes in the 1960s and 1970s. Groups including anti-Castro Cubans, Jewish Defense League, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, Puerto Rican freedom fighters, Croatian freedom fighters, the Weather Underground and radical individuals robbed banks, hijacked jets, attacked police and exploded bombs. They killed and maimed many innocent Americans.
Conservatives condemned the bombings. Radical Chic rose on the Left.
“The government is indulging in murderous violence on so vast a scale that nobody’s mind can contain it. That’s why it’s easy to headline the Weatherman’s bomb, lonely little bomb, lonely little antirobot bomb, that wasn’t intended for humans,” poet Allen Ginsburg rhapsodized at the time.
Previously, the reward for information on the 2008 Times Square and consulate bombings was $115,000. Officials hope the additional $135,000 will make a difference.
The FBI identified "several people of interest" during its investigation of the bombings, FBI agent Mark Kellett told NBC News New York on Wednesday. Two federal grand juries investigated the bombings, one in 2009 and again in 2013. No one was ever indicted.
Gerald Koch was called to testify before both grand juries and refused to testify both times. He was not a suspect. Federal prosecutors said they believed he was in a bar when someone spoke about the bombing, according to the New York Times. When he refused to testify a second time in 2013, Federal prosecutors had Koch jailed for contempt of court.
“My politics, principles and ethics stand in direct opposition with this legal tool that is used to further enable the government in its assault on anarchists,” the then-24-year-old Koch said in a statement from prison that August. “I will not lend it any legitimacy, nor will I comply in any way.”
Koch was held for 241 days before Federal Judge John Keenan ordered his release on Jan. 28, 2014.
“The Court sees no indication that Koch’s doctrinaire fever will break in the foreseeable future,” Judge Keenan wrote in a 20-page decision. “Consequently, there is no realistic possibility that he will choose to testify before the grand jury.”
Now, on the 15th anniversary of the Times Square bombing, the FBI's making another push to solve the case.
"People we've interviewed, perhaps their situations have changed. Or they're in a different place in life where this money may be more meaningful to them now," agent Kellett wagered. "Or perhaps they want to make amends for prior acts.”
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