U.S. banks are summarily canceling accounts of some customers with Islamic surnames. Why? They won’t say. And the trend is happening coast to coast, according to a Muslim advocacy group. Is the government behind it?
“I regret to inform you…”
Late last May, ReniyaManukyan, the widow of IbragimTodashev, publicly disputed a claim by the FBI that her dead husband was a murderer. Two months later, Manukyan received a letter from her bank informing her that her personal account was being cancelled. She had a month to withdraw her money.
Her “offense”? Neither the bank nor the FBI will say.
Manukyan was widowed May 22 by seven bullets fired into Todashev under suspicious circumstances by an FBI agent while he was being held and interrogated in his Florida apartment by several agents and Massachusetts State Police troopers.
The FBI subsequently claimed Todashev, along with alleged Boston Marathon bomber TamerlanTsarnaev, had slain three drug dealers in a grisly 2011 murder in Waltham, Mass.
But Manukyan provided an alibi for her dead spouse: bank records of purchases he had made in Atlanta on Sept. 11, 2011, the day of the killing.
After she revealed publicly that she had those records, Manukyan received a bizarre communication from her Atlanta bank. The message, mailed on August 28, 2013, informed her bluntly that her account was being cancelled. No reason was given.
