Mass. Residents Suing NY Post For Falsely Portraying Them As Marathon Bombing Suspects
BOSTON (CBS) -- Two Massachusetts residents are suing the New York Post, for falsely portraying them as suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings.
Filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court, the suit says photographs and articles published three days after the bombings suggested the FBI was looking for 16-year-old Salah Barhoum of Revere and 24-year-old Yassine Zaimi of Malden.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Lana Jones reports
Mass. Residents Suing NY Post For Falsely Portraying Them As Marathon Bombing Suspects
"These two young men plus a very large headline that stated 'bag men,' unambiguously suggested these were the men that brought the bombs to the site in their backpacks," Max Stern, lawyer for Barhoum told WBZ NewsRadio 1030.
Stern told WBZ, they have yet to specify what his client is looking for in damages.
The New York Post said Thursday, they are sticking by Editor-in-Chief Col Allan's original statement, released on April 18.
"We stand by our story. The image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men, as our story reported. We did not identify them as suspects," Allan's statement said.
The picture was not only on the front page of the New York Post, there was a picture on the inside pages with his face circled in the crowd.
It was also posted on websites whose users have been scouring the marathon finish line photos for suspects, especially ones with backpacks that could have carried a bomb.
In the days after the attack, Barhoum's father told WBZ-TV that the teenager, a track star at Revere High School, is now afraid to leave his home worried some will blame him for the bombings, no matter what. "
When people outside see him, they say 'look, he's a criminal'. He can't go outside," his father El Houssein Barhoum told WBZ-TV.
The two were cleared by police, shortly after their photographs surfaced and the FBI released images of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and named them as suspects.
