Inquiry Shifts to Suspect's Russian Trip
By ERIC SCHMITT, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ELLEN BARRY
WASHINGTON - With one suspect dead and the other captured and lying
grievously wounded in a hospital, the investigation into the Boston Marathon
bombings turned on Saturday to questions about the men's motives, and to the
significance of an overseas trip one of them took last year.
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 Congress expressed concern about the
F.B.I.'s handling of a request from Russia before the trip to examine the
man's possible links to extremist groups in the region.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died early Friday after a shootout with the police in
Watertown, Mass., spent six months in Dagestan in 2012, and analysts said
that sojourn might have marked a crucial step in his alleged path toward the
bombings.
Kevin R. Brock, a former senior F.B.I. and counterterrorism official, said,
"It's a key thread for investigators and the intelligence community to pull
on."
The investigators began scrutinizing the events in the months and years
before the fatal attack, as Boston began to feel like itself for the first
time in nearly a week.
On Monday, the twin bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon
killed three people and wounded more than 170. The tense days that followed
culminated in Friday's lockdown of the entire region as the police searched
for Mr. Tsarnaev's younger brother from suburban backyards to an Amtrak
train bound for New York City.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken into custody Friday night after he was
found, bloody and weakened, hiding on a boat in a driveway in Watertown. He
was still too wounded to speak on Saturday, said Gov. Deval Patrick of
Massachusetts. Special counterterrorism agents trained in interrogating
high-value detainees were waiting to question him, according to a law
enforcement official. An issue arose about the administration's decision to
question him for a period without giving him a Miranda warning, under an
exception for questions about immediate threats to public safety.
The brothers' motives are still unclear [?]. Of Chechen heritage, they had lived
in the United States for years, according to friends and relatives, and no
direct ties have been publicly established with known Chechen terrorist or
separatist groups. While Dzhokhar became a naturalized American citizen last
year, Tamerlan was still seeking citizenship. Their father, Anzor, said
Tamerlan had made last year's trip to renew his Russian passport.
The significance of the trip was magnified late Friday when the F.B.I.
disclosed in a statement that in 2011 "a foreign government" - now
acknowledged by officials to be Russia - asked for information about
Tamerlan. The request was "based on information that he 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."
The senior law enforcement official said the Russians feared he could be a
risk, and "they had something on him and were concerned about him, and him
traveling to their region." Chechen extremists pose a greater threat to
Russia than they do to the United States, counterterrorism specialists say,
though some of the groups have had ties to Al Qaeda.
But the F.B.I. never followed up on Tamerlan once he returned, a senior law
enforcement official acknowledged on Saturday, adding that its investigation
did not turn up anything and it did not have the legal authority to keep
tabs on him. Investigators are now scrambling to review that trip, and learn
about any extremists who might have influenced, trained or directed Tamerlan
while he was there.
President Obama and Republican lawmakers devoted their weekly broadcast
addresses to the Boston attack, with both sides finding a common voice. Mr.
Obama also met with his national security team for an update on the
investigation.
"Americans refuse to be terrorized," Mr. Obama said. "Ultimately, that's
what we'll remember from this week."
Since 1994, Russia and the United States have routinely exchanged requests
for background information on residents traveling between the two countries
on visa, criminal or terrorism issues.
The F.B.I. responded to the request in 2011 by checking "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," it said in a statement.
In January 2011, two counterterrorism agents from the bureau's Boston field
office interviewed Tamerlan and family members, a senior law enforcement
official said on Saturday. According to the F.B.I.'s statement, "The F.B.I.
did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign," and conveyed
those findings to "the foreign government" by the summer of 2011.
Federal officials said on Saturday that the Department of Homeland Security,
however, had decided not to grant a petition from Tamerlan for United States
citizenship after officials found a record in his files that he had been
interviewed by the F.B.I. His petition was held for further review.
As the law enforcement official put it, "We didn't find anything on him that
was derogatory."
The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the father of the Tsarnaev
brothers recalling the F.B.I.'s close questioning of his elder son, "two or
three times." He said they had told his son that the questioning "is
prophylactic, so that no one sets off bombs on the streets of Boston."
In an interview in Russia, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the two men,
said that the agents had told her that Tamerlan was "an excellent boy," but
"at the same time, they told me he is getting information from really
extremist sites, and they are afraid of him."
After Tamerlan's visit to Dagestan and Chechnya, signs of alienation
emerged. One month after he returned to the United States, a YouTube page
that appeared to belong to him was created and featured multiple jihadist
videos that he had endorsed in the past six months. One video featured the
preaching of Abdul al-Hamid al-Juhani, an important ideologue in Chechnya;
another focused on Feiz Mohammad, an extremist Salafi Lebanese preacher
based in Australia. He also created a playlist of songs by a Russian musical
artist, Timur Mucuraev, one of which promoted jihad, according to the SITE
Intelligence Group, which monitors statements by jihadists.
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.
On Saturday morning, federal prosecutors were drafting a criminal complaint
against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was wounded in the leg and neck.
An official said the criminal complaint would most likely include a
constellation of charges stemming from both the bombings and the shooting,
possibly including the use of weapons of mass destruction, an applicable
charge for the detonation of a bomb. That charge, the official said, carries
a maximum penalty of death. Though Massachusetts has outlawed the death
penalty, federal law allows it.
The F.B.I. and local law enforcement agencies continued on Saturday to
gather evidence recovered from the suspects' home and the cars they used.
Investigators found five pipe bombs and three grenades after the firefight
Friday, and they were seeking to identify the origins of the explosives.
Agents fanned out to interview family members and others who knew the
brothers to determine any motive, as well as clues about what or who
radicalized them. Three Kazakh citizens who were acquainted with Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev contacted the Kazakh Embassy in Washington, reporting that they had
been questioned by the F.B.I. and asking for consular assistance, said Ilyas
T. Omarov, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan, a former
Soviet republic. None of the three were held, he said.
Muslim leaders in many cities rushed to hold news conferences and preach
sermons at mosques denouncing the bombing suspects, mourning the victims and
praising the response of law enforcement and the community in Boston. They
were eager to dissociate their faith from the Muslim suspects, and to head
off a backlash against Muslims in the United States.
Anzor Tsarnaev and his younger son first came to the United States legally
in April 2002 on 90-day tourist visas, federal law enforcement officials
said. Once in this country, the father applied for political asylum,
claiming he feared deadly persecution based on his ties to Chechnya.
Dzhokhar, who was 8, applied for asylum under his father's petition, the
officials said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the United States later, and applied for American
citizenship on Sept. 5 last year, federal law enforcement officials said.
Eric Schmitt and Michael S. Schmidt reported from Washington, and Ellen
Barry from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by John Schwartz and Julia
Preston from New York; Andrew Roth and David M. Herszenhorn from
Makhachkala, Dagestan; Peter Baker from Washington; and C. J. Chivers from
the United States.
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