adminAs with previous incidents, much remains unknown, including the motive of those who allegedly carried it out, whether others were involved and what connection the FBI and other government agencies had to them.
In a televised statement immediately after the capture of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the bombings, President Barack Obama told the American public: “Obviously, tonight there are still many unanswered questions. Among them, why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks, and did they receive any help?”
However, it is the government that has released very little information about what it knows. Moreover, the Obama administration has decreed that Dzhokhar will be denied his Miranda rights, allowing CIA, FBI and military interrogators to question him without the presence of an attorney, thereby further limiting any information surfacing outside of what is vetted by the government and its intelligence agencies.
In addition to the questions raised by Obama, there are a number of others that bear serious scrutiny.
- How did the two brothers obtain the explosives used in the bombings?
- What relationship existed between the Tsarnaev brothers and the FBI and other US intelligence agencies?
- Did US authorities have any knowledge about the Boston bombing plot before it was executed?
- What role did US policy in relation to Russia and the separatist movements in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus play in the US government’s attitude toward the Tsarnaevs?
While much remains murky about these and other issues, one thing is clear: the Boston bombing, like virtually every other major terrorist incident, real or invented, since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, was carried out by someone who was known to and under surveillance by US intelligence agencies.
There have been increasing questions raised concerning the FBI’s handling of a request from a foreign government, presumed to be Russia, that it investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev on suspicion of involvement in Islamist terrorism.
The request came in advance of a six-month visit that Tamerlan made to Russia beginning in January of last year, during which he stayed with his father in Dagestan and visited Chechnya, where several members of the family live. In a statement released in the wake of the Boston bombings, the FBI acknowledged that Russian authorities had determined that Tamerlan Tsarnaev 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 FBI said that in response to this request it “checked US 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.”
The statement concluded that the FBI “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011.”
The Russian media have reported that Russian security services again contacted the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in November of last year. Both of the parents of the two suspects have provided accounts of the FBI’s role that contradict the agency’s public statement.
The mother of the two brothers, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, a naturalised US citizen, told Russia Today that the FBI agents had told her that “Tamerlan was an extremist leader and they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremists’ web sites.”
“It is a set-up. He was controlled by FBI for three to five years. They knew what my son was doing. They knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going . . . So how could this happen? How could they, they were controlling his every step, and they are telling today that this is a terrorist act.”
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, the young men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that the FBI had visited the family’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts at least five times looking for Tamerlan.
He said: “They said there were doing preventive work. They were afraid there might be some explosions on the streets of Boston.”
The father said that he had been present at one FBI interrogation in which agents had told his son, “We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know everything about you. Everything.”
Like the mother, he insisted that his sons had been “framed up.”
Russian sources reported that both parents had subsequently been questioned by Russia’s Federal Security Service, after which they cut off further contact with the Western media.
Reports of FBI involvement with Tamerlan Tsarnaev have led to criticism by US lawmakers, including South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has called for the younger brother to be treated as an “enemy combatant” and turned over to the US military. He said in a Sunday television interview that “the ball was dropped” by the FBI.
There have been no explanations forthcoming about how “the ball was dropped.”
And without either of the two suspects or anyone else providing a motive for the bombings, much is unclear. — wsws
Online Reporter