With the dramatic daylong manhunt over for the younger suspect in the bombing of the Boston Marathon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched an intense investigation into both suspects’ ties to Chechnya and extremist groups, and they have a good starting point.
Even before the bombing, the FBI already had a file on one of the suspects because a foreign government tipped off the U.S. government that he could be dangerous.
The FBI had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaeva, the older brother, two years ago at the request of a foreign government and found nothing “derogatory,” according to a report in Politico and an interview of the suspects’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva.
Tamerlan Tsarnaeva died early Friday morning following a shootout with police. His younger brother and suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaeva, was taken into custody Friday night.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told CNN Friday in an interview that the FBI has been keeping tabs on her son for three to five years and wondered how the U.S. government could have allowed him to go ahead with his plans if they were watching him so closely.
“Tamerlan was counseled by the FBI for three, five years,” she said. “They knew what my son was doing. They knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going. How could this happen? How could they – they were following every step of him, and they’re telling today this is a terrorist act.”
• Susan Crabtree can be reached at scrabtree@washingtontimes.com.
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