The Weekly season 1, episode 4 recap: Collision
THE WEEKLY “Collision” Episode 4 (Airs Sunday; June 23, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: New York Times Reporter Rukmini Callimachi sits down with Bakhtiniso Malimova, second wife of the alleged terrorist linked to the attack.. CR: FX
This episode of The Weekly looks at the deaths of two American tourists in Tajikistan in 2018 and features a New York Times reporter sitting down with the mastermind behind the deadly terrorist attack.
This week’s episode of The Weekly may be tough to stomach. It follows international investigative reporter Rukmini Callimachi as she leads us through the unsettling murder of four people (including two American tourists) in Tajikistan in July 2018. Her original article came out in early August of that year.
Callimachi spent five years reporting on ISIS and this episode of The Weekly opens with her staring down one of the men responsible for the Tajikistan murders, showing him a photo of his victims and asking, point blank, why he killed them.
The Victims
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Then the episode rewinds to set the stage a bit. Americans Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan were two people who were in love with each other and the idea of not wasting their lives in soul-draining day jobs. Together, they decided to quit their jobs and bike around the world.
Not to break any records or visit any country, but to simply enjoy their lives to the fullest.
The episode details numerous countries they went through in African and Europe before finally landing on Tajikistan (around a year into their journey).
There’s footage from a local cameraman (who was getting footage as part of an effort to encourage tourism to the area) of Austin and Geoghegan meeting up with other cyclists. Callimachi sits down with one of those cyclists for an interview—Kim Postma.
Postma describes what she remembers from July 29, the day their group set out cycling down the road together. Postma was there as a car came up behind their group and plowed through them. As she recovered from being hit, she watched as the car that went through them stopped and as five men got out of the car with knives.
The men stabbed some of the cyclists before getting back in the car and running over others again. Postma was barely able to get out of the way of that second run.
(This is where there’s a content warning. It’s pretty grainy footage, but there is footage of the car turning and making that second run through a group of cyclists sprawled over the street.)
The attack, the first ISIS attack on Tajikistan, left four people dead: Rene Woke, Markus Hummel, Austin and Geoghegan.