Suspect, mother in U.S. files for 18 months
Russia requested FBI, CIA investigate Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, older son
WASHINGTON U.S. intelligence agencies added the mother of the Boston bombing suspects to a government terrorism database 18 months before the bombings, two officials told The Associated Press. She called it “lies and hypocrisy” and said she has never been linked to crimes or terrorism.
The CIA asked for the older suspect, now dead, and his mother to be added to a terrorist database in the fall of 2011, after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that both had become religious militants, according to officials briefed on the investigation. About six months earlier, the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, also at Russia’s request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism.
The younger suspect, 19-year-old Dzhohkar Tsarnaev, was moved overnight from a hospital to a federal prison medical centre to continue his recovery from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during a getaway attempt. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a shootout with police.
Also, FBI agents picked through a landfill near the campus of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was a student. FBI spokesman Jim Martin would not say what investigators were looking for.
The revelation that the FBI had also investigated Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and the CIA arranged for her to be added to the terrorism database deepened the mystery around the family. The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who immigrated to the Boston area in the past 11 years.
Tsarnaeva, a naturalized U.S. citizen who has appeared on television interviews since the attacks and reversed her decision to return to the U.S. after the bombings, has said her sons could never have been behind the deadly attacks and believes they were framed.
The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the ongoing case.
Dzhohkar Tsarnaev is charged with joining with his older brother in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15. He could face the death penalty.
Officials said that before he was advised of his constitutional rights to remain silent or consult a lawyer, Dzhokhar admitted to FBI interrogators that the brothers committed the bombings and that he was recruited by his brother to participate only a week or two before the attacks. Previously, U.S. officials have said only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan. But in March 2011, the Russians asked the FBI to look into Tamerlan and his mother because of concerns they were religious militants who planned to travel back to Russia, the official said.
The FBI found nothing to link either person to terrorism, and the FBI closed the investigations in June 2011. Then, the Russians in the fall sent the same warning to the CIA. The CIA asked the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to add the mother’s and son’s names to its huge, classified database of people known to be terrorists and those who are suspected of having terror ties, called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.
Being in that database does not mean the U.S. government has evidence that links someone to terrorism. About a year ago, there were some 745,000 names in the database.
Intelligence analysts add names and partial names to TIDE when terror-related intelligence is shared with them.