adminThe older of the two Tsarnaev brothers suspected of setting off the Boston marathon bombs — 26-year-old Tamerlan — was shot and killed Friday by US police while his younger brother Dzhokhar was wounded and is in custody.
Tsarnaev travelled to Russia’s southern region of Dagestan, where he had previously lived, in late 2011, staying for a total of five months and 13 days, said a security source involved in tracking extremist activity in the region.
“Security services came across Tamerlan four times in course of his visit,” he told AFP.
“They were monitoring another young man, suspected of connections with the Islamist insurgency, and Tamerlan was seen with him.
“But then the young man disappeared from view of the security services, and Tamerlan was no longer seen either,” the source added.
“He left Dagestan in June of last year.
“Nothing was seen for which he could be detained or charged.”
Since it was known that Tamerlan came from the United States, Russia asked the FBI for information about him, once at the end of 2011, and once several months after he left, in November 2012, the source said.
The FBI said Friday that a request from an unidentified foreign government for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev came as he was “prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.” Dagestan is the most restive of the North Caucasus regions, a mountainous territory in the south with a mostly Muslim population and an ongoing Islamist, anti-Kremlin insurgency.
However the local branch of the main Caucasus Islamist group Caucasus Emirate denied on the weekend that it had any involvement in the Boston blasts, which killed three people and wounded 180.
Meanwhile, the father of the suspected bombers insisted in an interview published yesterday that his sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar were innocent and could not have carried out the bombings.
Their plans for the future had included returning to work in Russia, Anzor Tsarnaev said in the telephone interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda daily, adding that he hoped to travel to the United States where his younger son Dzhokhar is in hospital after his capture with serious injuries.
“I only know what they are showing on television. We plan to go and see him in America if Allah permits.”
His two sons “were studying and working” in the United States, he said.
He said that he last spoke to his elder son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after the bombings. His son told him then that he had received a phone call saying he was a suspect, he said.
The men’s father argued that the attacks were somehow orchestrated by the FBI, who he said “kept my Tamerlan constantly under surveillance.”
“They just wanted to set up Tamerlan and Dzhokhar just turned out to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.
“Tamerlan was driving him to school when they started shooting at them,” he claimed.
“This is a set-up, a political order, a Hollywood show.”
“Tamerlan changed jobs a few times: he delivered post, he changed tyres, he was a boxing trainer and in recent months a baby sitter — he sat at home with his three-year-old child. His wife worked. She looked after disabled people.”
Tamerlan last visited Russia in January to get a new passport after turning 25, he said, although he apparently referred to January 2012, since Tamerlan was 26.
“He didn’t want to leave. He said that he wanted to bring his family over here. He didn’t like it there, although he was a famous boxer in Boston.” He denied that Tamerlan held radical Islamist views.
“Tamerlan did get religious after getting married. He went to the mosque every Friday. He prayed five times a day. He was a righteous Muslim, and could not have done what he is accused of.”
His other son, Dzhokhar, “was an ‘A grade’ student at Cambridge. He worked as a lifesaver at a pool. He had big plans: to become a doctor, to open a business, to come over here,” Anzor Tsaraev said.
“He said: ‘Dad, don’t worry. I’ll finish studying and come over, I’ll help you.’” — AFP.
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