Boston Marathon Bombing Survivor Sues Glenn Beck for DefamationIn the aftermath of last year’s bombings at the Boston Marathon, Glenn Beck publicly and vocally accused Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian student who was injured at the marathon, of funding and participating in the attacks. That turned out to be very much untrue. Now, nearly a year after the bombing, Alharbi is suing the radio host and his parent companies for defamation.
A week after the marathon Beck told his audience that he was absolutely certain that Alharbi was behind the attacks, and refused to relent even after FBI officials investigated Alharbi and declared him innocent. According to the complaint, Beck “repeatedly questioned the motives of federal officials in failing to pursue or detain Alharbi and repeatedly suggested that Alharbi had engaged in wrongful and criminal activity…but was being protected by the wrongful acts of others covering up those crimes on his behalf.”
As a result, due to Beck’s actions, the complaint claims that Alharbi’s reputation has been severely damaged, and he receives “numerous messages, internet postings, and communications” accusing him of being a “murderer, child killer, and terrorist.”
It should be noted that Beck made his claims about Alharbi long after after the Boston police publicly identified the men involved in the bombing and arrested one.
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http://www.mediaite.com/tv/boston-marathon-bombing-survivor-sues-glenn-beck-for-defamation/ Following the bombing at the Boston Marathon last year, Glenn Beck went on a personal crusade to prove that the Obama administration was engaged in a massive cover-up of the role that an al Qaeda operative played in the attack and was doing so for the benefit of the Saudi Arabian government.
Beck infamously gave the US government three days to come clean about the cover-up before he exposed it on his network. When those three days passed, Beck launched into a full-scale campaign to prove that Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, who was injured in the bombing, was actually an al Qaeda "control agent" and "money man" who financed the operation and recruited the Tsarnaev brothers to carry it out.
Beck's theory rested on the fact that Alharbi had once been considered a "person of interest" during the investigation but was quickly cleared. Beck's network received information during the investigation that Alharbi "was set to be deported under section 212 3B" for "terrorist activities" and it was upon that piece of information that Beck built his entire campaign, as he spent days hammering away, challenging everyone to disprove his theory and warning that they would only discredit themselves if they tried to do so.
Eventually, Beck's crusade came to a grinding halt when he brought a former INS special agent onto his program to bolster his theory but, instead, watched as Bob Trent blew a hole right through it by pointing out that the 212 3B designation and Beck's entire timeline "doesn't make sense."