They were just there to watch the race, but gained Internet infamy Apr 18, 2013 3:59 PM EDT Their pictures were circulated all over the Internet, with red circles scrawled around their faces and their backpacks. Why did some shots seem to show them with the suspiciously heavy bags and others did not? What were they conferring about as onlookers around them watched the Boston Marathon? It turned out the two males had done nothing wrong. One is a high school runner, who had hoped to run the 26.2-mile race, and the other is his coach, according to thesmokinggun.com.. "They were at Monday's marathon for the same reason other spectators were - to cheer on competitors. But with the web on fire with speculation, and federal and local authorities appealing to the public for photos, video and observances from the crowd at the race's finish line, where two bombs exploded, killing three and injuring 176, Yassine Zaimi, 24, and Salaheddin Barhoum, 17, found themselves front and center in a digital frenzy. "u will see guys I did not do anything," Barhoum, a Moroccan immigrant who attends Revere High School outside Boston, wrote in a Facebook post cited by the website. "[I'm going] to the court right now. I'm just going to tell them that it was not me." It wasn't just the armchair detectives who wondered about the pair. Their photos were circulated internally by the FBI, though the agency refused to release them publicly in the hours before they were cleared. One newspaper also ran the photos on its front page. Zaimi, a Boston resident who also emigrated from Morocco and attended Revere High School, is a devoted runner who won a five-kilometer charity race in suburban Boston in 2010, according to the site. The mistaken suspicion is not likely to slow the crowd-sourced analysis of photos and video from the terror attack. Sites such as reddit.com and imgur.com have produced forums of people who continue to pore over photos and share their observations. A reddit poster known by "Rather_Confused" warned fellow readers to rein in the speculation. "We do not condone vigilante justice. Our aim is simply to provide tips for the FBI, not to take matters into our own hands," the poster wrote. "While it's admirable to help, posting information on anyone noted in pictures could have a devastating effect on their life."
