Russia caught bomb suspect on wiretap

 

Russia caught bomb suspect on wiretap

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=IBuuqOYn

 

 

EILEEN SULLIVAN and MATT APUZZO

Published: 8 minutes ago

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone

conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely

discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the

U.S. government finally received details about the call.

 

In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan

Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI

investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.

 

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier,

they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough

investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

 

As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that

Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional

information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June

2011.

 

Two years later, authorities say Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhohkar,

detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon,

killing three and injuring more than 260. Tamerlan was killed in a police

shootout and Dzhohkar is under arrest.

 

 

In the past week, Russian authorities turned over to the United States

information it had on Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. The

Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens who emigrated from southern Russia to the

Boston area over the past 11 years.

 

Even had the FBI received the information from the Russian wiretaps earlier,

it's not clear that the government could have prevented the attack.

 

In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a

conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad,

according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they

were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

 

The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he

told his mother he didn't speak the language there, according to the

officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S.

 

In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus region

of Russia who was under FBI investigation. Jacqueline Maguire, a spokeswoman

for the FBI's Washington Field Office, where that investigation was based,

declined to comment.

 

There was no information in the conversation that suggested a plot inside

the United States, officials said.

 

It was not immediately clear why Russian authorities didn't share more

information at the time. It is not unusual for countries, including the

U.S., to be cagey with foreign authorities about what intelligence is being

collected.

 

Nobody was available to discuss the matter early Sunday at FSB offices in

Moscow.

 

Jim Treacy, the FBI's legal attache in Moscow between 2007 and 2009, said

the Russians long asked for U.S. assistance regarding Chechen activity in

the United States that might be related to terrorism.

 

"On any given day, you can get some very good cooperation," Treacy said.

"The next you might find yourself totally shut out."

 

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has denied that she or her sons were involved in

terrorism. She has said she believed her sons have been framed by U.S.

authorities.

 

But Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers and Zubeidat's former

brother-in-law, said Saturday he believes the mother had a "big-time

influence" as her older son increasingly embraced his Muslim faith and

decided to quit boxing and school.

 

After receiving the narrow tip from Russia in March 2011, the FBI opened a

preliminary investigation into Tamerlan and his mother. But the scope was

extremely limited under the FBI's internal procedures.

 

After a few months, they found no evidence Tamerlan or his mother were

involved in terrorism.

 

The FBI asked Russia for more information. After hearing nothing, it closed

the case in June 2011.

 

In the fall of 2011, the FSB contacted the CIA with the same information.

Again the FBI asked Russia for more details and never heard back.

 

At that time, however, the CIA asked that Tamerlan's and his mother's name

be entered into a massive U.S. terrorism database.

 

The CIA declined to comment Saturday.

 

Authorities have said they've seen no connection between the brothers and a

foreign terrorist group. Dzhohkar told FBI interrogators that he and his

brother were angry over wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the deaths of

Muslim civilians there.

 

Family members have said Tamerlan was religiously apathetic until 2008 or

2009, when he met a conservative Muslim convert known only to the family as

Misha. Misha, they said, steered Tamerlan toward a stricter version of

Islam.

 

Two U.S. officials say investigators believe they have identified Misha.

While it was not clear whether the FBI had spoken to him, the officials said

they have not found a connection between Misha and the Boston attack or

terrorism in general.

 

___

 

==========================================

(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this

message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to

these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed

within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with

"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.

The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The

Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain

permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials

if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,

teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria

for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies

as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four

criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is

determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not

substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use

copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you

must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

 

THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS

PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.