Sunday, April 21, 2013

4.21.13 - Tamerlan Tsarnaev - News Review

10:28 AM 4/21/2013


Blurred CCTV images of the suspected Boston bombers -- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (left) and his brother Tamerlan -- shortly before the city's annual marathon was attacked.
Blurred CCTV images of the suspected Boston bombers -- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (left) and his brother Tamerlan -- shortly before the city's annual marathon was attacked.


Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
North Caucasus Resistance Denies Role In Boston Bombings
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A website used by the resistance movement in Russia's North Caucasus has published a statement saying it has no connection with the April 15 bombing at the Boston Marathon.




Boston bombing suspect captured, brother killed
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ALTERNATE CROP - This still frame from video shows Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev visible through an ambulance after he was captured in Watertown, Mass., Friday, April 19, 2013.A 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody Friday evening after a manhunt that left the city virtually paralyzed and his older brother and accomplice dead. (AP Photo/Robert Ray)WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) — Lifting days of anxiety for a city and a nation on edge, police captured the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, found bloodied in a backyard boat Friday night less than 24 hours after a wild car chase and gun battle that left his older brother dead and Boston and its suburbs sealed in an extraordinary dragnet.

Boston suspect captured alive after dramatic finish to day-long manhunt
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• Dzhokhar Tsarnaev taken into custody after police standoff
• Suspect, 19, found hiding in boat in Watertown backyard
• Obama: 'Our nation is in debt to the people of Massachusetts'
The 22-hour manhunt for the surviving Boston bombing suspect reached a dramatic and surprising conclusion on Friday night when 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured alive after being surrounded by heavily armed police in a suburban backyard.
Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat in the yard of a home in Watertown, Massachusetts, the small town near Boston where his elder brother Tamerlan was fatally shot by police after a chase that began the prevous evening. The pair had been identified as suspects in Monday's double bomb attack on the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 170.
For about two hours on Friday night, Tsarnaev was surrounded by Swat teams and hundreds of other officers, surviving a barrage of gunfire and flash grenades. At 8.41pm ET, it was finally announced over the police radio: "Suspect in custody".
Tsarnaev, pictured, had been injured in a shootout with police on Thursday and had suffered significant blood loss. Police said he was in a serious condition in hospital on Friday night.
When the news came through that Tsarnaev captured alive, Thomas Menino, the mayor of Boston who has struggled through the week with his own health issues, reacted by saying: "We got him." A large crowd gathered near the location of the suspect's arrest began clapping and shouting "Thank you" as a police ambulance carrying the suspect drove by.
At a jubilant press conference after the arrest, the sense of relief among law enforcement officials was palpable.
Massachusetts police superintendent, Colonel Tim Alben, said: "We are so grateful to bring justice and closure to this case. We are grateful for the outcome here tonight. We're exhausted, folks, but we have a victory here tonight."
Explaining the breakthrough that had led to Tsarnaev's capture, Edward Deveau, the Watertown police chief, praised local residents. "It was a call from a resident of Watertown," he said. "We asked you to remain vigilant and you did. We got the call and we got the guy."
Shortly before the the arrest, police in New Bedford, Massachusetts, confirmed that the FBI had taken three people into custody for questioning at a housing complex where Tsarnaev, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, may have lived.
In a statement at the White House, President Obama said: "Tonight our nation is in debt to the people of Boston and the people of Massachusetts. All in all, it's been a tough week, but we've seen the character of our country once more."
But he said there were many unanswered questions, particularly with the news that both men had lived in the US for some time. "Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to this violence?"
There are also likely to be questions about the role of the FBI. The Tsarnaevs' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told Russia Today that the FBI had been in contact with Tamarlan Tsarnaev for between three and five years.
The FBI admitted looking into the activities of the older brother in 2011 following a request by a foreign government, thought likely to be have been Russia.
Agents checked Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name against their databases along with his education, travel history and possible associations with other persons of interest.
"The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011," the FBI said in a statement on Friday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's apprehension brings to an end five days of high anxiety that began at 2.50pm on Monday, with the blasts, 12 seconds apart, near the finish line of the Boston marathon. The FBI say the brothers had dropped bags containing bombs made from pressure cookers packed with nails and ball bearings.
A breakthrough in the case came on Thursday evening when police identified two suspects and published their photorgraphs. The drama unfolded quickly: at about 10.30pm on Thursday the two brothers, of Chechen origin, ambushed a police officer, Sean Collier, 26, on the campus of MIT. They then carjacked a black Mercedes, sparking a car chase with police that ended with a huge gunfight in Watertown.
Pipe bombs and other explosive devices were thrown by the suspects. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed, but Dzhokhar Tsarnaev escaped on foot.
More than a million residents of Boston and the surrounding towns had been told to stay inside their homes for most of Friday as hundreds of law enforcement officers went door to door in Watertown searching for Tsarnaev.
The final flurry of frenzied police activity began shortly before 7pm on Friday, just minutes after police chiefs had come before the TV cameras and told the residents of Watertown that they were ending the lockdown, despite admitting that they had lost track of the suspect.
A renewed bout of gunfire of about 30 rounds ripped through Watertown as Swat teams and dozens of police vehicles raced to the area of Birch Road, a leafy street with about 14 houses in it. Police immediately ordered people in Watertown to stay indoors, while officers evacuated nearby households, helping families flee across an adjacent field.
A resident of Watertown had called police to report he had found a man covered in blood hiding in the boat standing in the yard of a house in Birch Road. Officers exchanged gunfire with the Tsarnaev as they surrounded the boat. There was no chance this time that he could escape.
It is now believed that Tsarnaev may have been holed up in the boat all day, eluding the door-to-door search that was going on elsewhere. Birch Road is just a couple of blocks outside the 20-block exclusion zone that the police had set up early on Friday in an attempt to contain the suspect.
Amid fears that Tsarnaev may have been wearing a suicide vest or carrying explosives, officers were extremely cautious about moving in. As darkness fell, the barrage of forces ringed around the boat was reinforced by specialist FBI squads dressed in full military gear, wearing protective helmets and vests and equipped with nightvision goggles. Bomb disposal experts, equipped with a robot, were also brought in.
Police used a helicopter to monitor the boat from overhead, reporting early in the operation that there was visible movement coming from underneath the tarp, suggesting that Tsarnaev was at that point still alive. Minutes before 8pm there were flashes of light and booms thought to be grenades thrown into the boat.
Around 150 people had gathered at the end of nearby Franklin Street to watch the police operation. Most were neighbours who lived within one or two blocks. Many had waited here for an hour or more after hearing police had the second suspect cornered.
The first sign that Tsarnaev might have been taken into custody came when a uniformed officer walked away from the top of Franklin Street and vigorously clapped the hand of a fellow official. He looked down at the ground and clapped his hands two or three times.
The crowd read the signal and broke out into applause, cheering. "Did you get him?" one man shouted. An officer nodded his head. The cheers intensified.
"It feels great," said Bill Forbush, who two blocks away from where Tsarnaev was apprehended. He and his wife, Ann, had been standing on the corner for an hour and a half. They had heard the first gunshots, and heard the sounds of what reportedly were flash bang grenades. They had spent 20 hours indoors while the town was locked down.
"It's nice to be out in the spring air and be relieved," Bill Forbush said. "There's a great sense of relief."
As he spoke police vehicles and officers began to stream out of Franklin Street. Each vehicle and each official was cheered. "Great job, you guys," shouted one man, over and over.
Tsarnaev had proved to be exceptionally adept in eluding the combined forces of some of the most highly trained and heavily armed law enforcement agencies in America. By the time of his capture, he had managed to evade capture for more than four days.

'A guy with full potential'

More details emerged on Friday about the background of the brothers, ethnic Chechens who had followed a convoluted path to the United States. Although it appears that they never lived in Chechnya, they maintained close ties to its culture.
There were conflicting reports about their places of birth. Local media in Kyrgyzstan quoted police saying they had both been born there. But family members in the US said the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was born in Dagestan. The brothers are thought to have spent some of their youth in the city of Tomok, the centre of Kyrgyzstan's Chechen community.
According to his page on the Russian social network VKontakte, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attended School Number One in Makhachkala, Dagestan's capital. Irina Bandurina, an administrator at the school, said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev studied there in 2001, after moving from Kyrgyzstan, and left for the United States in 2002. He appears to have spent his formative years in the US and graduated from high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2011. The first of two wars in Chechnya broke out in 1994, a year after he was born. The battles with Moscow spawned Islamic radicalism in the state, leading to deadly attacks on the Moscow metro in 2004 and 2010, and a school in Beslan in 2004.
Checnya's separatist cause struck Tamerlan Tsarnaev deeply, according to a report by photographer Johannes Hirn, who profiled the young Chechen when he was training for a boxing match in 2010. One caption in the report, which had been removed from Hirn's website by Friday night, read: "Unless his native Chechnya becomes independent, Tamerlan says he would rather compete for the United States than for Russia."
The photo essay also showed him to have been committed to his Muslim faith, and poorly integrated in the US. According to Hirn's report, the Chechen once said: "I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them."
Friends of Dzhokhar Tsaranaev described him as very differnet from his older brother. Zolan Kanno-Youngs, an intern at the Boston Globe, told the paper in a video report that they were good friends at Cambridge Rindge Latin high school with Dzokhar.
He said: "Dzhokhar was just a guy with full potential, and never showed any signs of doing this whatsoever. I think that if you ask anybody in Cambridge that truly knew him, and truly hung out with him, this you would know that this is probably the most shocking news we've heard in a while ... I can't even comprehend it still."

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Russia, US may face a shared threat - Boston Globe
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Russia, US may face a shared threat
Boston Globe
They were reportedly devout Muslims who were born into a family of ethnic Chechens, lived in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, and studied in Russia's North Caucasus, before coming to the United States as children. Over time, the older brother, ...

Suspects' Chechen Roots Draw Eyes To Russia - NPR
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NPR

Suspects' Chechen Roots Draw Eyes To Russia
NPR
The Tsarnaev family has roots in the mountainous part of southern Russia between the Black and Caspian Seas. The Tsarnaevs apparently spent little time in the region, however, a point that was driven home forcefully by Chechen President Ramzan ...
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Boston bombings: Russia to help US with bomb plot probe - BBC News
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BBC News

Boston bombings: Russia to help US with bomb plot probe
BBC News
Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered support to American intelligence officers investigating the Boston Marathon bombings. The main suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had lived in the United States for more than 10 years, but are ethnic ...
Boston bombing could have US-Russia implicationsUSA TODAY
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Boston suspect was under FBI surveillance, mother says
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Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are pictured in this combination photoBy Timothy Heritage MOSCOW (Reuters) - One of the two ethnic Chechens suspected by U.S. officials of being behind the Boston Marathon bombings had been under FBI surveillance for at least three years, his mother said. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the English-language Russia Today state television station in a phone interview, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters, that she believed her sons were innocent and had been framed. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar was captured after a day-long manhunt. ...

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Boston suspects' Chechen family traveled long road
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Schoolchildren march in front of a school where Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was dubbed a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, studied, in a small Kyrgyz city Tokmok east of the country's capital of Bishkek, on Friday, April 20, 2013. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was an amateur boxer with muscular arms and enough brio to arrive at a sparring session without protective gear. The Tsarnaev family arrived in the United States, seeking refuge from strife in their homeland. The family had moved from Kyrgyzstan to Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus that has become an epicenter of the Islamic insurgency that spilled over from Chechnya. (AP Photo/Abylay Saralayev)TOKMOK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — The two brothers accused of blowing up homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon came from a Chechen family that for decades had been tossed from one country to another by war and persecution.

Russia asked FBI to investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 – report - RT
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RT

Russia asked FBI to investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 – report
RT
Russia asked the FBI to investigate Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, a source in US law enforcement told Reuters. The FBI had earlier reported on its website that an unnamed 'foreign government' had asked them for information.

Boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hid 'looked like Swiss cheese' after shootout
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Tsarnaev was found when Watertown man looked underneath tarpaulin and found the Boston bombing suspect inside
The boat that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in looked like "Swiss cheese" after the Boston bombing suspect's shootout with police, the boat's owner told neighbours.
Tsarnaev was taken into custody after a Watertown resident, named locally as David Henneberry, went to check on his boat and found Tsarnaev inside. Swat teams moved in and a gun fight ensued, resulting in Tsarnaev being captured. He is in hospital in a serious condition.
On Saturday, Henneberry was being hailed as the man who helped end a tense 22-hour manhunt, which, until his phone call to police, had been fruitless.
But it came at a cost. The boat – a source of immense pride for the owner, according to local residents – was no longer seaworthy, being, as it was, riddled with bullet holes.
"He said the boat was like Swiss cheese," said one neighbour, who did not want to give her name but lived a few doors down from the boat owner.
The resident said she had spoken to Henneberry on Friday night, after police had taken away the suspect.
"He was shellshocked," she said. She said Henneberry had lifted the cover on his boat and seen Tsarnaev inside before calling authorities.
"He saw that the tarp was open, and that seemed wrong to him, because we've had a pretty harsh winter and the boat had never been undone. He checks on his boat a lot – that's his baby, so that's how he noticed it," she said.
Access was restricted to Franklin Street on Saturday, with police tape blocking off the section of the neighbourhood where Friday's drama played out.
Residents were milling around, intrigued by the small number of television crews who remained on scene.
Images from news teams depicted Tsarnaev sitting up on the side of the boat.
Other pictures showed him receiving medical attention at the scene and with a mask over his mouth in an ambulance.
Rebecca Heavey, 29, lives in the house behind where Tsarnaev was found. Her backyard is adjacent to where the boat was stored. She described the drama as authorities swarmed over her garden to get to Tsarnaev.
"I just saw all the Swat teams in our backyard with their funds drawn," she said. "We were crawling on our elbows through the house, trying to find a safe place. Our doorbell was ringing and we didn't know who it was, we couldn't see the police. We were terrified."
Swat teams used her car for cover, Heavey said, and propped up their guns on the roof.
Heavey said she had ventured out briefly into her backyard on Friday afternoon, breaching the lockdown order to take her dog out for a walk.
"The kid could probably hear us in our backyard from where he was," she said.

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Boston bombings: a chance for US-Russia cooperation - Reuters
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NPR

Boston bombings: a chance for US-Russia cooperation
Reuters
"I hope the revelation of the bombers' Chechen ties will, if anything, open a window of opportunity to repair U.S.-Russia security cooperation," said Matthew Rojansky, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment in ... 
Suspects' Chechen Roots Draw Eyes To RussiaNPR
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Boston Marathon bombing investigation turns to motive
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Law enforcement officials stand on Franklin St. as the search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, comes to an end in WatertownBy Ben Berkowitz and Ross Kerber BOSTON (Reuters) - With the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings lying seriously wounded in a hospital and unable to speak on Saturday, investigators worked to determine a motive and whether the ethnic Chechen brothers accused of the attack acted alone. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was captured late on Friday after a gunfight with police that ended a daylong manhunt and sent waves of relief and jubilation throughout Boston. His brother, Tamerlan, 26, died on Thursday after a shootout with police. ...

Boston Suspect's Increasingly Extremist Views Angered Russian Relatives - Slate Magazine (blog)
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Slate Magazine (blog)

Boston Suspect's Increasingly Extremist Views Angered Russian Relatives
Slate Magazine (blog)
There seems to be more and more evidence that the older suspect, Tamelan Tsarnaev, had extremist views on religion. But according to his relatives that shift into extremism did not happen in Russia, as some U.S. lawmakers have claimed, but rather in ...

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FBI wait to quiz Dzhokhar Tsarnaev amid relief over suspect's capture
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Suspect in Boston bombing remains in a serious condition in hospital following capture on Friday after intense manhunt
Special agents trained with interrogating high-value suspects were waiting Saturday to question Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old alleged Boston marathon bomber who remains in a serious medical condition at one of the city's hospitals.
The suspect was brought late on Friday night to Beth Israel Deaconess medical center – the same hospital where earlier in the day his brother Tamerlan died having been shot in a massive gunfire with police. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said Saturday that Dzhokhar was in a serious but stable condition and was "not able to communicate yet."
The capture of the younger brother led to an outpouring of celebrations across Boston, with people draping trees with the American flag along Boylston Street, near to where the two bombs were detonated.
In Dorchester, where one of the victims, eight-year-old Martin Richard, lived, people set off fireworks.
With a week-long manhunt for the suspects now over, and Boston getting back to normal following a virtual lockdown of the city on Friday, thoughts are now turning to the unanswered questions raised by the marathon bombings. The younger Tsarnaev was not read his Miranda rights – including his right to remain silent – at his arrest under a public safety exception, allowing investigators to grill him about possible accomplices or networks that might have conspired in the attacks.
It was a decision supported by some, including Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who called for Tsarnaev to be classified as an "enemy combatant".
But civil rights advocates gave warning over the move. The American Civil Liberties Union said the public safety exemptions from Miranda rights should not be "open-ended" and that America "must not waiver from our tried and true justice system".
US prosecutors are considering how best to press charges against Tsarnaev, bearing in mind his medical condition. They might wait for him to recover sufficiently to be taken to the federal courthouse in South Boston, or they might even request a federal judge comes to the hospital to charge him at the bedside.

In the meantime, armed guards stood by his bedside at a hospital where many of the wounded from Monday's bombing were taken. US officials said a special interrogation unit specialised in dealing with high-value suspects were waiting to question the 19-year-old.
Once federal investigators are allowed access to Tsarnaev, they will be keen to quiz him on his connections – in the US, in Dagestan, where his father lives, and Chechnya, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev is thought to have visited last year.
Overnight, the FBI took two men and a woman in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in to custody and are questioning them about their links to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Much of the investigation is likely to focus on the activities of Dzokhar's elder brother. The FBI has revealed that in 2011 Tamerlan was interviewed by its agents at the request of an unnamed foreign government – widely reported to have been Russia - who asked the bureau to look into whether Tamerlan, then 24, had extremist connections.
In a statement, the FBI said that the foreign government had information that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a "follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country's region to join unspecified underground groups."
In response to the request, the FBI scoured Tamerlan's telephone records, online history, associations with other people, movements and educational history, and agents interviewed him and his relatives. But the bureau found no evidence of terrorism activity either at home or abroad. It passed on its findings to the foreign government.
The FBI is now likely to retrace its steps and repeat that search more thoroughly.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's six-month visit to Russia last year will be of particular interest to federal agents. During the visit he stayed with his father, Anzor Tsarnaev, in Makhachkala, Dagestan, and visited the family's ethnic home of Chechnya, it is believed.
Speaking from Russia, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the suspects' mother, suggested that Tamerlan had already been subjected to FBI surveillance.
"They knew what my son was doing, they knew what sites on the internet he was going to," she told state television.

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Boston bombing suspect was under FBI surveillance, says mother
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'They told me my son was an extremist leader,' says Zubeidat Tsarnaeva

One of the two men suspected of being behind the Boston Marathon bombings was under FBI surveillance as a suspected "extremist" for at least three years, according to his parents.
As questions were raised about how well known Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were to federal investigators, their mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, said that the FBI had spoken to the family regularly: "They were telling me that Tamerlan was really an extremist leader and they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremists' sites." She added that the police were monitoring her son "at every step".
The bloody denouement to the hunt for the bombers came four days after the attack and 24 hours after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives at the marathon finish line.
The attack killed three people and injured more than 170. Armed guards were stationed at the hospital where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect, was being held, after being apprehended following a gun battle on Friday evening. Medical staff said he was in a serious condition. A special interrogation team for high-value suspects was waiting to question the university student about the most serious terror attack on American soil since 9/11.
As the debate about the withholding of Tsarnaev's Miranda rights – the statement read by police to suspects stating their right to remain silent and to have an attorney – continued, prominent US senators have called for the suspect to be treated as an "enemy combatant", equivalent to the detainees at Guantánamo. That would allow him to be questioned and held indefinitely.
The revelation that the FBI was monitoring the elder Tsarnaev brother will lead to a debate over whether the attack could have been prevented. The men's father – who claims that his sons have been framed – supplied more details about the FBI's interest in Tamerlan in a telephone interview with the Wall Street Journal. Anzor Tsarnaev said that agents had talked to Tamerlan in 2011. They described him as a "person of interest".
"Yes, I was there. It was in Cambridge [Massachusetts]. They said: 'We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know everything about you. Everything'." He added: "They said we are checking and watching – that's what they said." In a message to his son, he said: "Tell police everything. Everything. Just be honest."
The parents' claims appear to contradict a statement by the FBI saying that, after checks on Tamerlan and his family, along with a review of travel records, internet activity and personal associations, it "did not find any terrorism activity". Officials have added that the brothers had not been under surveillance.
Since his death, it has been revealed that a YouTube account believed to be managed by Tamerlan linked to online material concerning radical preachers, terrorism and a religious prophecy supposedly popular with al-Qaida followers.The motives behind the brothers' attack remain mysterious. Although Tamerlan had been described as becoming more religious in recent years, acquaintances of the brothers described a pair whose behaviour was often at odds with strict Islam, including Dzhokhar's fondness for hip-hop and skateboarding and consumption of soft drugs.
During a night of violence on Thursday and into Friday, after they had been identified by pictures taken at the marathon, the brothers killed a police officer on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, severely wounded another during a gun battle and hurled explosives at police in a desperate getaway attempt.
Aged 26, Tamerlan died of his injuries from the shootout with police and a possible blast injury. He was also apparently run over by his younger brother in a car as he lay wounded. The 19-year-old Dzhokhar was captured after a day-long manhunt that paralysed Boston and its surrounding suburbs. He had been hiding injured in a boat in a back yard in Watertown; the owner was alerted by a trail of blood. The subsequent shootout left the boat looking like "swiss cheese", its owner told a neighbour.
The neighbour, who did not want to give her name, added that the boat's owner was "shell shocked" after making the discovery. "He saw that the tarp was open and that seemed wrong to him because we've had a pretty harsh winter and the boat had never been undone. He checks on his boat a lot, that's his baby, so that's how he noticed it," she said.

The interrogation team planned to question Dzhokhar without reading him his Miranda rights. Those rights will be waived using a rarely deployed public safety clause, triggered by the need to protect police and the public from immediate danger.
The capture of Dzhokhar lifted days of anxiety for Boston and Americans everywhere. President Barack Obama, who branded the suspects "terrorists", vowed that investigators would solve the mystery of why the brothers embarked on their campaign of terror. "The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers," he said, adding that the capture of the second suspect closed "an important chapter in this tragedy", while acknowledging that there are many unanswered questions, including whether the two men had help from others.
Shortly before Dzhokhar's capture, the White House said that Obama had spoken by phone with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, about the investigation. The White House said in a statement that Obama "praised the close co-operation that the United States has received from Russia on counter-terrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack".

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Boston bomb suspect hospitalized under heavy guard
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Police officers stand near statues of former Boston Red Sox greats, from left, Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio during a baseball game between the Kansas City Royals and the Boston Red Sox, the first game held in the city following the Boston Marathon explosions, Saturday, April 20, 2013, in Boston. Police captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, late Friday, after a wild car chase and gun battle earlier in the day left his older brother dead. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)BOSTON (AP) — Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lay hospitalized in serious condition under heavy guard Saturday — apparently in no shape to be interrogated — as investigators tried to establish the motive for the deadly attack and the scope of the plot.

Bombing Inquiry Turns to Motive and Russian Trip - New York Times
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Bombing Inquiry Turns to Motive and
Russian Trip
New York Times
Federal investigators are hurrying to review a visit that one of the suspected bombers made to Chechnya and Dagestan, predominantly Muslim republics in the north Caucasus region of Russia. Both have active militant separatist movements. Members of ...
Russia sought FBI's help in 2011 to probe Boston suspectReuters
Photos View galleryToronto Star
Boston bombings dispatch - inside Dagestan, the stronghold of Russia's ...Telegraph.co.uk

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New York Times
The Lede: Updates on Aftermath of Boston Marathon Explosions
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The Lede is following the aftermath of Monday’s deadly explosions at the Boston Marathon, which killed three and injured more than 170.
    


The FBI's big miss: Boston bombing fugitive shot dead was on radar two years ago
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Major questions about US security and intelligence services were raised last night after it was revealed that the elder of the two apparent Boston bombers had been investigated as a possible Islamist terrorist two years ago, but was not deemed worthy of further attention.
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Russia Warned FBI About Tamerlan Tsarnaev Before Bombing - Gawker - Gawker
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Russia Warned FBI About Tamerlan Tsarnaev Before Bombing - Gawker
Gawker
Russia Warned FBI About Tamerlan Tsarnaev Before Bombing New details about the brothers suspected of being behind the Boston Marathon have slowly trickled out today. Investigators are now focusing on a 2011 trip to Russia by the older brother, ...

Russia sought FBI's help in 2011 to probe Boston suspect - Reuters
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Russia sought FBI's help in 2011 to probe Boston suspect
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia asked the FBI in early 2011 to investigate Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev out of concern he had embraced radical Islam and was going to travel toRussia to join underground groups, U.S. law enforcement ...
Russia asked FBI to investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 – reportRT
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Conflict in the Caucasus, reflected in suspect’s YouTube playlist
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MOSCOW — In a few months, starting last August, the YouTube account in the name of Tamerlan Tsarnaev took on an increasingly puritanical religious tone. It moved from secular militancy to Islamist certainty.
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FBI faces questions over previous contact with Boston bombing suspect
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Agency admits it interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 'at request of foreign government' but did not find 'terrorism activity'
The FBI's previous contacts with one of the alleged Boston bombers have come under intense scrutiny as questions were raised about whether it missed vital clues that could have prevented the attack, which killed three people and injured more than 170.
The bureau admitted that it had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 "at the request of a foreign government", presumed to be Russia, which was concerned that he was a "follower of radical Islam". The FBI said that it did not find any "terrorism activity" and appears not to have had any further contact with him since.
FBI agents were scrambling to review a six-month visit to Russia by 26-year-old Tsarnaev last year, during which he stayed with his father in Dagestan and is reported to have visited the family's ethnic home of Chechnya.
In Boston, special agents trained in the interrogation of high-value suspects were waiting to question the surviving 19-year-old suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who remained in a serious condition in hospital on Saturday.
He was brought late on Friday night to Beth Israel Deaconess medical center – the same hospital where earlier in the day his brother Tamerlan died after a shootout with police. The Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick said on Saturday that Dzhokhar was in a serious but stable condition and was "not able to communicate yet".
As questions were raised about how well known the brothers were to federal investigators, their mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, said that the FBI had spoken to the family on multiple occasions. In an interview broadcast by Russia Todaybefore the end of the manhunt on Friday, Tsarnaeva, a naturalised US citizen, said FBI agents had spoken to her in the past.
"They were telling me that Tamerlan was really an extremist leader and they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremists' sites." Tsarnaeva, speaking from Dagestan, claimed that the FBI were monitoring her son "at every step", and had been "controlling" him for three to five years. She did not give specific dates.
The White House said Barack Obama had spoken to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as the manhunt came to an end on Friday. "President Putin expressed his condolences on behalf of the Russian people for the tragic loss of life in Boston," the White House said in a statement.
Obama "praised the close co-operation that the United States has received from Russia on counterterrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack," the White House said.

'Off the hook'

But there were concerns in Congress that the FBI appeared not to have maintained contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Representative Peter King of New York, a Republican member of the House homeland security committee, asked whether the FBI could have done more. "Did they move too quickly by letting this guy off the hook?" said King, quoted in Newsday. "Should they have looked more carefully?"
With a week-long manhunt for the suspects now over, and Boston getting back to normal following a virtual lockdown of the city on Friday, questions were also being raised about the approach of federal prosecutors to the surviving suspect.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not read his Miranda rights, the process under US law that would have informed him of his right to remain silent, when he was detained. Ordinarily that would mean that any confession would be inadmissible at trial, but Carmen Ortiz, US attorney for Massachusetts, cited a public safety exception that is intended to prevent the public from immediate danger. The exception would allow investigators to question Tsarnaev about possible accomplices or networks that might have conspired in the attacks.
Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain supported the decision not to read Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, and called for him to be classified as an "enemy combatant".
An expansion of the public safety exception to Miranda by the Obama administration is the subject of controversy, and civil rights advocates expressed concern about how it would be applied. The American Civil Liberties Union said the exemptions should not be "open-ended" and that America "must not waiver from our tried and true justice system".
US prosecutors are considering how best to press charges against Tsarnaev, given his medical condition. They might wait for him to recover sufficiently to be taken to the federal courthouse in south Boston, or they might even request a federal judge comes to the hospital to charge him at the bedside. US officials said a special interrogation unit specialised in dealing with high-value suspects were waiting to question him.
On Friday the FBI took two men and a woman in New Bedford, Massachusetts, into custody and are questioning them about their links to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The federal public defender's office in Massachusetts said it has agreed to represent Tsarnaev once he is charged. Miriam Conrad, public defender for Massachusetts, told the Associated Press that he should have a lawyer appointed as soon as possible because there are "serious issues regarding possible interrogation."
Once federal investigators are allowed access to Tsarnaev, they will be keen to quiz him on his connections – in the US, in Dagestan, where his father lives, and Chechnya, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev is thought to have visited last year.
Much of the investigation is likely to focus on the activities of the elder brother. The FBI has revealed that in 2011 Tamerlan was interviewed by its agents at the request of an unnamed foreign government – widely assumed to have been Russia – who asked the bureau to look into whether Tamerlan, then 24, had extremist connections.
In a statement, the FBI said that the foreign government had information that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a "follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country's region to join unspecified underground groups".

No evidence of terrorism

In response to the request, the FBI scoured Tamerlan Tsarnaev's telephone records, online history, associations with other people, movements and educational history, and agents interviewed him and his relatives. But the bureau found no evidence of terrorism activity either at home or abroad. It passed on its findings to the foreign government.
According to US travel records, Tsarnaev arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on 12 January 2012, returning on 17 July. He spent time in Makhachkala, Dagestan, that summer. "It was 40C and he was wearing these American boots," said Larissa Abakarova, who maintains a shop across the street from the home of the parents of Tsarnaev. "He was stylish, kind, good-looking. I'm in shock."
A neighbour, Vyacheslav Kazakevich, said the Tsarnaevs' parents would travel regularly between the neighbouring republics of Dagestan and Chechnya, where several relatives live, including an aunt. He said that Tamerlan visited Chechnya, just an hour's drive from Makhachkala, during his trip to Russia in early 2012. "All their roots are there. They had no ties to rebels or to wahhabi," he said, using the accepted Russian term for Islamist fundamentalists.
In the Russia Today interview, the suspects' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, claimed they had been set up by the FBI. But by Friday evening, the Tsarnaevs had been questioned by the Federal Security Service, sources said. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva shut off her phone and her husband rarely picked his up after that.
At around 6pm on Friday, a relative drove the two away – some said to Chechnya, others to a secret location in Makhachkala. "She was sobbing last night as she left, you could hear it," said the neighbour, Larissa Abakarova. "She was in hysterics."
By Saturday, more than 50 victims of the Boston bombing remained in hospital, with three in a critical condition.

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Russia: Sochi security tight after Boston bombs - Standard-Examiner - StandardNet
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StandardNet

Russia: Sochi security tight after Boston bombs - Standard-Examiner
StandardNet
MOSCOW — The naming of two Chechen brothers as the suspects in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing is reviving fears about security at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, the resort town on the edge of Russia's restive southern republics. But officials ...

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Boston bombs: Russia, US must cooperate on radical Islam, says senator - Al-Arabiya
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Boston bombs: Russia, US must cooperate on radical Islam, says senator
Al-Arabiya
The Chechen connection indicates we should work more closely with Russia and other nations who are also suffering the same kind of mayhem we have seen in Boston,” Press Trust India (PTI) reported Rohrabacher, who is chairman of the House Foreign ...
US senator urges cooperation with Russia on radical IslamTimes of India

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Uncle Says Older Bombing Suspect 'Used' Brother
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Tamerlan Tsarnaev ranted at a neighbor about Islam and the U.S.. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, relished debating people on religion, "then crushing their beliefs with facts."
Russian Billionaire Tops Britain's Rich List
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Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov has topped an annual "rich list" compiled by Britain's 'Sunday Times' newspaper, with a fortune of 13.3 billion pounds ($20.3 billion).

U.S. Accusations Shock Brothers' Kyrgyz Hometown
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One trail in the search for clues about why two ethnic Chechen brothers may have carried out the Boston Marathon bombings leads to a sleepy town in Kyrgyzstan where former neighbors recalled a quiet family that was never in trouble.
North Caucasus Resistance Denies Role In Boston Bombings
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A website used by the resistance movement in Russia's North Caucasus has published a statement saying it has no connection with the April 15 bombing at the Boston Marathon.



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Tamerlan Tsarnaev - Google Search


News Reviewed on: 9:15 AM 4/21/2013



Russia asked FBI to investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 – report ...

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20 hours ago – Russia asked the FBI to investigate Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, a source in US law enforcement told Reuters.



'They were set up, FBI followed them for years'- Tsarnaevs' mother to RT

Published time: April 19, 2013 21:52
Edited time: April 20, 2013 05:34

With the 24-hour manhunt for the second suspect of the Boston bombing closed, RT remembers its conversation with the parents of the Tsarnaev brothers, who claimed all along their children were set up.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva maintains her younger son is innocent and like so many of the brothers’ acquaintances, claims they were good, courteous kids and model students – especially the younger 19-year-old Dzhokhar. A US citizen who is presently in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, she revealed to RT some suspicions of her own.

Grief-stricken at the latest developments in the case, Zubeidat expressed her dismay at the allegations, recounting Dzhokhar’s life in the US and talking of his status among his peers and friends: he was an honors student, loved by many of his friends and teachers. And his older brother Tamerlan was a star athlete and student, whose ambition was to one day appear on the US Olympic wrestling team.

But her biggest suspicion surrounding the case was the constant FBI surveillance she said her family was subjected to over the years. She is surprised that having been so stringent with the entire family, the FBI had no idea the sons were supposedly planning a terrorist act.
Tsarnaev brothers (FBI/AFP Photo)
Tsarnaev brothers (FBI/AFP Photo)

They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me…they were telling me that he [the older, 26-y/o Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites… they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act! Never ever is this true, my sons are innocent!”
When asked if maybe she didn’t know about some of her sons’ more secret aspirations and dark secrets, she said “That’s impossible. My sons would never keep a secret.”
Finally, she said that if she could speak to her youngest – Dzhokhar, she would tell him, “Save your life and tell the truth, that you haven’t done anything, that this is a set up!”
The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev
The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev
In an interview with Russian television the brothers’ father Anzor Tsarnaev also claimed that they are innocent and somebody might have set them up.
I’m sure about my children, in their purity. I don’t know what happened and who did this.  God knows and he will punish them,” he told Zvezda channel. “Somebody might have set them up. I don’t know who and because of their cowardice killed the boy.”
The father said he was unable to contact his sons or other relatives. “Everything is switched off. I can’t reach my brother there either. I can’t reach anyone! I just want information. Now I fear for my boy, that they will now shoot him dead and then will say 'He had a gun'.”
I fear for my son, for his life. They should arrest him, bring him, but alive. Justice should investigate who is right and who is wrong,” he said.
Mr Tsarnaev recently spoke to his elder son, Tamerlan [Suspect #1], telling him that he should take care of his younger brother. Speaking of the Boston marathon bombing he told his son “Ok, Thanks to Allah you were not close to there and did not suffer.”
I remember I even asked “Who could do something like that?”
“We just talked. I asked him about our Dzhokhar [Suspect #2], how was he. I told him, he should help him out and keep an eye on him, so that he studies well. I told him ‘You left school, got married too early, but the kid should finish [his education]’. Because this is life – those who don’t study work a lot and work hard. That’s why I was telling them study”.
Russian 'Alpha' Special Forces team-veteran and vice-president of its International Association, Aleksey Filatov, believes there is more to the case than meets the eye. He emphasizes, firstly, that the origin and religious beliefs of the suspect, along with the specifics of the bombing, have all been carefully pre-meditated and planned by someone within the United States in order to distract the public from the true identity and long-term aims of the actual planners.

Putting a young Chechen in those shoes was top-notch professionalism in distracting everyone from the true identity and motives of the planner,” he told RT.

The executors were chosen to confuse the American public and simultaneously untie the White House’s hands in a way that would justify a departure from the rhetoric of non-involvement in military action on foreign territories.”

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Russia Distances Itself From Suspects - WSJ




A spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service declined to confirm the statement made to Interfax when contacted Saturday. He said to call back on Monday when the agency should have more information.

Since a high-profile manhunt in Boston shined the spotlight on the two bombing suspects, Russia has started distancing itself from the Tsarnaev brothers, whose parents are currently in Dagestan, a republic in the south of Russia that borders Chechnya.

"Their presence in Russia is minimal," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Wall Street Journal on Saturday morning. Ramzan Kadyrov, the current President of Republic of Chechnya in southern Russia, decried "any attempt" to connect the brothers with Chechnya in a statement Friday night. "They grew up in the United States. Their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. One must look for the root of the evil in America," Mr. Kadyrov said. The Federal Security Service spokesman on Saturday immediately pointed out that one of the alleged bombers was a U.S. citizen.

The comments come a day after a U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal that the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of the Russian government but found no suspicious information and closed the matter. The U.S. official made the comments after the brothers' mother started giving interviews saying that FBI officials had been in touch with her and her son in the past. The Russian Federal Security Service spokesman said he had no immediate information about Russian authorities contacting the FBI.

The Tsarnaev family's connection with Russia is complex because of the intricate patchwork of ethnicities that comprises Russia and the former Soviet Union.

In an interview, the brothers' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said he is ethnically Chechen and his ex-wife, the boys' mother, is ethnically Avar, one of the main groups in Dagestan. Chechnya and Dagestan are neighboring republics that fall within Russia's borders in the south of the country. Their populations generally aren't ethnically Russian and speak native languages other than Russian. But they are citizens of Russia, and Russian is the lingua franca among the various republics along the country's southern border.

The brothers' time spent living in Russia was limited. The family lived in Chechnya for a year in 1994 and later lived in Dagestan for a few years from 1999 to the early 2000s, Mr. Tsarnaev said. Otherwise they lived mostly in Kyrgyzstan before moving to the U.S. about 10 years ago, he said.

Though he is ethnically Chechen, Anzor Tsarnaev grew up in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan because his parents were deported there in the Stalin era alongside many other ethnic Chechens.

Write to Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com


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Inquiry on Bombing Shifts to Suspect’s Russian Trip

With one suspect dead and the other lying wounded in a hospital, the investigation into the Boston bombings turned to their motives and a trip one of them took to Chechnya and Dagestan.

The Boston bombings have led to increased cooperation between Washington and Moscow, a jarring shift coming amid weeks of rancor over American criticism of Russia’s human rights record. Presidents Obama and Vladimir V. Putin spoke by telephone late Friday night, in a conversation initiated by the Russian side, the Kremlin announced. The Kremlin’s statement said both leaders expressed “the building of close coordination between Russian and American intelligence services in the battle with global terrorism.”
Nevertheless, there were glaring questions about the case, among them how Tamerlan had escaped scrutiny.
A Russian intelligence official told the Interfax news service on Saturday that Russia had not been able to provide the United States with “operatively significant” information about the Tsarnaev brothers, “because the Tsarnaev brothers had not been living in Russia.”
Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who specializes in Russia’s security services, said he believed that Tamerlan might have attracted the attention of Russian intelligence because of the video clips he had posted under his own name, some of which were included on a list of banned materials by the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.
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Legal Questions Riddle Boston Case

The issues include a debate over where the suspect might be tried and whether the bombings were a crime or an act of war.

A New Argument for Immigration Foes

Some opponents of an immigration overhaul are pointing to the Boston attack as cause for concern.

Photographs Scenes From a Week of Terror

Boston’s tumultuous week began with the excitement of a race and ended with the tension of a manhunt.



The New York Times


April 20, 2013

F.B.I. Interview Led Homeland Security to Hold Up Citizenship for One Brother




Department of Homeland Security officials decided in recent months not to grant an application for American citizenship by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, after a routine background check revealed that he had been interviewed in 2011 by the F.B.I., federal officials said on Saturday.
Mr. Tsarnaev died early Friday after a shootout with the police, and officials said that at the time of his death, his application for citizenship was still under review and was being investigated by federal law enforcement officials.
It had been previously reported that Mr. Tsarnaev’s application might have been held up because of a domestic abuse episode. But the officials said that it was the record of the F.B.I. interview that threw up red flags and halted, at least temporarily, Mr. Tsarnaev’s citizenship application. Federal  law enforcement officials reported on Friday that the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Tsarnaev in January 2011 at the request of the Russian government, which suspected that he had ties to Chechen terrorists. 
The officials pointed to the decision to hold up that application as evidence that his encounter with the F.B.I. did not fall through the cracks in the vast criminal and national security databases that the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. review as a standard requirement for citizenship. The application, which Mr. Tsarnaev presented on Sept. 5, also prompted “additional investigation” of him this year by federal law enforcement agencies, according to the officials. They declined to say how far that examination had progressed or what it covered.
The handling of Mr. Tsarnaev’s application could be crucial for the Obama administration in the Senate debate that began this week over a bipartisan bill, which the president supports, for a sweeping immigration overhaul. Some Republicans skeptical of the bill have said they will watch the Boston bombings investigation to see if it reveals security lapses in the immigration system that should be closed before Congress proceeds to other parts of the bill, including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
The record of the F.B.I. interview was enough to cause Homeland Security to hold up Mr. Tsarnaev’s application. He presented those papers several weeks after he returned from a six-month trip overseas, primarily to Russia, and only six days after his brother, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, had his own citizenship application approved. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in custody and is in serious condition in a hospital.
Late last year, Homeland Security officials contacted the F.B.I. to learn more about its interview with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, federal law enforcement officials said. The F.B.I. reported its conclusion that he did not present a threat.
At that point, Homeland Security officials did not move to approve the application nor did they deny it, but they left it open for “additional review.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s record also showed that he had been involved in an episode of domestic violence in 2009. His father, Anzor, said in an interview on Friday in the Russian republic of Dagestan, where he lives, that Tamerlan had an argument with a girlfriend and that he “hit her lightly.”
Under immigration law, certain domestic violence offenses can disqualify an immigrant from becoming an American citizen, and perhaps expose him to deportation. But the Homeland Security review found that while Mr. Tsarnaev was arrested, he was not convicted in the episode. The law requires a serious criminal conviction in a domestic violence case for officials to initiate deportation, federal officials said.
Both Tsarnaev brothers came to the United States and remained here legally under an asylum petition in 2002 by their father, who claimed he feared for his life because of his activities inChechnya. Both sons applied for citizenship after they had been living here as legal permanent residents for at least five years, as the law requires.William K. Rashbaum and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.

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Business Insider‎ - 17 hours ago

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FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev after 2011 tip

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Russian FSB intelligence security service told the FBI in early 2011 about information that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, was a follower of radical Islam, two law enforcement officials said Saturday.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout, and his younger brother was captured alive. They were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade.
According to an FBI news release issued Friday night, a foreign government said that based on its information, Tsarnaev was a strong believer and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the U.S. for travel to the Russian region to join unspecified underground groups.
The FBI did not name the foreign government, but the two law enforcement officials identified the FSB as the provider of the information to one of the FBI's field offices and also to FBI headquarters in Washington. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.
The FBI said that in response, it interviewed Tsarnaev and relatives, and did not find any domestic or foreign terrorism activity. The FBI said it provided the results in the summer of 2011. The FBI also said that it requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.
The bureau added that in response to the request, it checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans and education history.
___
Associated Press writers Adam Goldman and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.

FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev after 2011 tip - Yahoo! News

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