Tamerlan Tsarnaev Jihad Call To Mother Overheard By Russians
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s jihad call home to his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has raised new questions about whether or not the authorities could have done more to prevent the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this month. According to an Associated Press report Saturday, unnamed Russian officials have now admitted that they had wiretaps on the Tsarnaev family that allowed them to capture two 2011 discussions that referred to jihad.
According to the AP’s unnamed source, in one of the recorded phone calls, Tamerlan and his mother discussed jihad cautiously and rather vaguely. She reportedly suggested that he travel to Palestine, but he refused because he didn’t know the language.
She also mentioned jihad in a second conversation with an individual in southern Russia under investigation in a separate case.
As The Inquisitr reported yesterday, there is now new evidence that the mother of the Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was herself under investigation for links to terrorist activities.
Russia made two attempts in 2011 to inform US law enforcement officials that they regarded the Tsarnaevs as potential extremists. However, they didn’t provide details about the phone calls or the use of the word “jihad,” which is popularly used to refer to holy war.
Instead, they talked to the FBI in March 2011. At that time, the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev and other family members, then closed the investigation for lack of evidence.
The Russians then complained to the CIA in September 2011.
However, they didn’t respond to US requests for more information. Nor did they reveal the wiretapped evidence until after the chilling April 19 manhunt that resulted in Tamerlan’s death and Dzhokhar’s capture.
Before the Boston bombing, no Chechen group had targeted Americans, and it’s difficult to say what US authorities would have done if the Russians had shared the wiretapped conversations in advance.
Do you think the FBI or CIA would have moved more forcefully against the Tsarnaevs if they had known about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s jihad call to his mother?
[photo by Veerachia Viteeman via Shutterstock]
