Written by: Associated Press
2 min readWashingtonApr 28, 2013 12:50 AM IST
First published on: Apr 28, 2013 at 12:50 AM IST
US 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 had 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 Russias request,one of the officials said.
The FBI found no ties to terrorism.
Also,FBI agents picked through a landfill near the campus of 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 Boston in the past 11 years.
Tsarnaeva said it would not surprise her if she was listed in a US terror database. Its all lies and hypocrisy, she told the AP from Dagestan. Im sick and tired of all this nonsense they make up about me and my children… Ive never been mixed up in any criminal intentions,especially any linked to terrorism.
Jailed friends had seen no hints of violent thoughts in Dzhokhar
Boston: Two university friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who were jailed by immigration authorities the day after his capture had nothing to do with the deadly attack and had seen no hints that he harboured any violent thoughts or terrorist sympathies,a lawyer for one of them has said. Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev,from Kazakhstan,were classmates with Tsarnaev at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. They appeared with him in a recent photo at Times Square. PTI
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