Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev cried in court as his sobbing aunt briefly took the stand on May 4 in his federal death penalty trial before she was asked to step down to compose herself.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, wiped tears from his eyes quickly and fidgeted in his chair as his mother’s sister Patimat Suleimanova sobbed uncontrollably.
He had maintained a disinterested expression since his trial began in January.
Patimat Suleimanova cried as she sat down about 10ft from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The tears began falling before she began to testify, and she was only able to answer questions about her name, her year of birth and where she was born.
After a few minutes, Judge George O’Toole Jr. suggested that the defense call a different witness so Patimat Suleimanova could compose herself. As she left the witness stand, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev used a tissue to wipe his eyes and nose.
Five relatives of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – three cousins and two aunts – took the stand, though it was unclear if the aunt who broke down would be allowed to complete her testimony.
As Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was led out of the courtroom before the lunch recess, he blew a kiss at family members.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted last month of 30 federal charges in the bombings, including 17 that carry the possibility of the death penalty.
He moved to the US with his family in 2002 and committed the bombings when he was 19.
Prosecutors say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an equal partner in the bombings with his radicalized older brother, Tamerlan, and have urged the jury to sentence him to death.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers say Tamerlan, 26, was the mastermind of the attack and lured his brother into his plan.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died days after the bombings following a shootout with police.
A cousin testified on May 4 that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a kind and warm child, so gentle that he once cried while watching The Lion King.
“I think that his kindness made everybody around him kind,” Raisat Suleimanova said through a Russian translator.
Assistant US Attorney William Weinreb pounced, asking Raisat Suleimanova if she believes a deadly attack on innocent civilians can be considered kind.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyer objected, and Raisat Suleimanova was not allowed to answer the question.
Shakhruzat Suleimanova, another sister of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s mother, Zubeidat, testified that Dzhokhar, Tamerlan and their two sisters were well-behaved as children.
“They were so good. They wouldn’t hurt a fly. My sister’s children were such good children,” she said.
Shakhruzat Suleimanova said the family was crushed when Zubeidat Tsarnaeva moved to the US with her husband and children.
Five or six years later, when Zubeidat Tsarnaeva returned to Russia for a visit, the family was shocked to see her sister – always a fashionable dresser – covered in black clothing and wearing a jihab.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers have argued that he was influenced by his brother and his mother, who had become radicalized in the years before the bombings.
“We were all shocked. We were all in pain. We were very scared,” Shakhruzat Suleimanova said.
“We had never had people like that in our family. We prayed, we fasted, but no people like that.”
Prosecutors urged the judge last week to press Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers to make sure his relatives testify soon because 16 FBI agents have been assigned to guard and protect them while they are in the United States. The family members arrived in Boston on April 23.
“It’s an enormous expense and distraction for the agency, and that’s just part of the expense that the government has endured,” William Weinreb said during a sidebar discussion in court with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers and the judge, according to a transcript that was made public.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has recovered enough to walk, his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said.
In an interview for the Associated Press, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said her son told her in a phone call that he and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a police manhunt after the Boston Marathon blasts, were innocent.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was shot and injured during the manhunt, is currently being held in a prison hospital.
Last month’s bombings left three people dead and more than 260 others injured.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told AP that it was the first conversation she had had with her son since he has been held in custody.
He told her he was getting better but was struggling to comprehend what had happened.
“He didn’t hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: <<What is this? What’s happening?>>” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said.
“I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan.”
The Tsarnaev family has continued to claim the men’s innocence in the bomb attacks, which targeted the finishing line of the Boston Marathon on April 15.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has recovered enough to walk
The family, who are ethnic Chechen Muslims from Russia, spoke from an apartment in the Russian republic of Dagestan which reportedly belonged to 26-year-old Tamerlan, who was hit in a shoot-out with police in the aftermath of the bombings.
The suspects’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said they bought the apartment in anticipation of Tamerlan and his family moving to Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.
“All I can do is pray to God and hope that one day fairness will win out, our children will be cleared, and we will at least get Dzhokhar back, crippled, but at least alive,” he told AP.
Meanwhile, the father of a Chechen immigrant Ibragim Todashev, who was shot and killed during a violent confrontation with Boston Marathon investigators, has accused agents who killed his son of being “bandits”.
Ibragim Todashev, 27, admitted a role in a triple murder near Boston in 2011 and implicated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the crime.
However, no evidence has emerged to link Ibragim Todashev to the bombings.
On May 22, he was shot and killed in Orlando, Florida.
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, his father, Abdul-Baki Todashev, showed 16 photographs that he said were of his son in a Florida morgue.
He claimed his son had six gunshot wounds to his torso and one to the back of his head. However, the photos have not been authenticated.
There are conflicting reports about the events that led to Ibragim Todashev’s death, with law enforcement officials initially saying he was shot after attacking an FBI agent with a knife but later saying they were not clear about what happened.
Ibragim Todashev’s father says his son was “100% unarmed” and has called for an investigation into his death.
“These are not FBI agents but bandits – I cannot call them anything else and they must be tried,” he said.
His son met Tamerlan Tsarnaev at a boxing gym in Boston in 2011 but they were “not particularly close friends”, Abdul-Baki Todashev adds.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva that “everything will be fine” in their first telephone call since his arrest in the Boston Marathon bombings case as he recuperates at a Massachusetts prison hospital.
According to Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who spoke to her son yesterday from Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s Dagestan region, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said: “I am absolutely fine, my wounds are healing. Everything is in God’s hands. Be patient. Everything will be fine.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, stands accused of carrying out the April 15th attack in Boston, which killed three people and injured at least 260 along with his brother Tamerlan, who was killed following a brutal shootout with police on April 19th in the Watertown suburb of the city.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva had their first phone call since his arrest
The teenage terror suspect was arrested after a 36 hour multi-agency manhunt and is currently being held at Devens Federal medical center as he recovers from gunshot wounds, including one to the neck.
“Mentally he is normal but the child is shocked,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said to Bloomberg.
“It was really hard to hear him and for him to hear me. The conversation was very quiet. It was my child, I know he is locked up like a dog, like an animal.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the news agency that the conversation she had with her son lasted six minutes and that she is promised one a month with him.
This comes as the sister of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev faces a drugs charge in New Jersey.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of Boston bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, appeared in photos of her as a younger woman wearing a low-cut blouse and having her hair teased like a 1980s rock star.
After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.
But in recent years, people noticed a change. The Boston bombers’ mother began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.
Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
In another, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, 45, insists there is no mystery. She’s no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons – Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was wounded and captured – are innocent.
“It’s all lies and hypocrisy,” she told The Associated Press in Dagestan.
“I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I’ve never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva arrived in the U.S. in 2002, settling in a working-class section of Cambridge, Massachusetts. With four children, Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva qualified for food stamps and were on and off public assistance benefits for years. The large family squeezed itself into a third-floor apartment.
She took classes at the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, before becoming a state-licensed aesthetician. Anzor Tsarnaev, who had studied law, fixed cars.
By some accounts, the family was tolerant.
Bethany Smith, a New Yorker who befriended Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s two daughters, said in an interview with Newsday that when she stayed with the family for a month in 2008 while she looked at colleges, she was welcomed even though she was Christian and had tattoos.
“I had nothing but love over there. They accepted me for who I was,” Bethany Smith told the newspaper.
“Their mother, Zubeidat, she considered me to be a part of the family. She called me her third daughter.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said she and her son Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named “Misha”.
The man, whose full name she didn’t reveal but later was identified as Mikhail Allakhverdov, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam.
“I wasn’t praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said.
By then, she had left her job at the day spa and was giving facials in her apartment. One client, Alyssa Kilzer, noticed the change when Zubeidat Tsarnaeva put on a head scarf before leaving the apartment.
“She had never worn a hijab while working at the spa previously, or inside the house, and I was really surprised,” Alyssa Kilzer wrote in a post on her blog.
“She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious. She was often fasting.”
Alyssa Kilzer wrote that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was a loving and supportive mother, and she felt sympathy for her plight after the April 15 bombings.
But the woman stopped visiting the family’s home for spa treatments in late 2011 or early 2012 when, during one session, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva “started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9/11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims”.
“It’s real,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said, according to Alyssa Kilzer.
“My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet.”
In the spring of 2010, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s eldest son, Tamerlan, got married in a ceremony at a Boston mosque that no one in the family had previously attended. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife, Katherine Russell, a Rhode Island native and convert from Christianity, now have a three-year-old daughter, Zahara.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva married into a Chechen family but was an outsider. She is an Avar, from one of the dozens of ethnic groups in Dagestan. Her native village is now a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism or Wahabbism.
It is unclear whether religious differences fueled tension in their family. Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva divorced in 2011.
About the same time, there was a brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia’s security service.
The vague warning from the Russians was that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an amateur boxer in the U.S., was a follower of radical Islam who had changed drastically since 2010.
That led the FBI to interview Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the family’s home in Cambridge. Officials ultimately placed his name, and his mother’s name, on various watch lists, but the inquiry was closed in late spring of 2011.
After the bombings, Russian authorities told U.S. investigators they had secretly recorded a phone conversation in which Zubeidat Tsarnaeva had vaguely discussed jihad with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The Russians also recorded Zubeidat Tsarnaeva talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.
Anzor Tsarnaev’s brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told the AP from his home in Maryland that he believed his former sister-in-law had a “big-time influence” on her older son’s growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school.
While Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living in Russia for six months in 2012, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who had remained in the U.S., was arrested at a shopping mall in the suburb of Natick, Massachusetts, and accused of trying to shoplift $1,624 worth of women’s clothing from a department store.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva failed to appear in court to answer the charges that fall, and instead left the country.
Posters expressing support for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is charged with last month’s bombings at the Boston Marathon, have been put up on walls in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny.
It is not clear who is behind the posters declaring Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “not guilty”, which appeared after Russia’s May Day celebrations.
The posters show pictures of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, and include an appeal for online donations.
The Tsarnaev family are ethnic Chechens but have lived mostly outside Chechnya.
Residents of Grozny say the posters most likely came from someone trying to make money out of the Boston Marathon bombings.
Posters expressing support for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have been put up on walls in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s elder brother Tamerlan – a fellow suspect – was killed during a clash with police three days after the April 15 bombings, which killed three people and wounded 264.
Reports say the Tsarnaevs lived for years in Kyrgyzstan – in Central Asia – and Dagestan, another Russian republic in the North Caucasus which borders Chechnya.
In the 1990s, Russia’s war in Chechnya spilled into Dagestan. It is now more violent, and is experiencing an Islamist insurgency and harsh police crackdown.
Pro-Tsarnaev leaflets have also appeared in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, Russia’s Interfax news agency reports. Police are trying to find out who stuck them on the walls of underpasses in the city centre.
The posters in central Grozny follow an earlier campaign there in support of the Tsarnaevs. The authorities removed the earlier ones, which appeared on April 24.
The latest posters in Grozny say: “This is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old lad accused of a terrorist attack in Boston. But as many people now know, that is a groundless accusation, there is absolutely no evidence against him.
“Now he is in a serious condition, in a prison hospital, he needs medical and legal help. Dzhokhar’s parents ask you for help, to collect money for their son, whom they cannot lose, as they have already lost the older son, cruelly, unjustly. We will be grateful for any help, in the name of the Almighty do not remain indifferent.”
The message includes a number for the Russian online payment system, Qiwi Wallet, and the Tsarnaev family address in the social network, VKontakte.
According to Chechnya’s Moscow-backed President Ramzan Kadyrov, the Tsarnaevs spent little time in Chechnya, a republic devastated by war between Russia and separatist rebels in the 1990s.
Since then, Grozny has been rebuilt and now boasts skyscrapers and a huge central mosque.
Anzor Tsarnaev, father of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, says he is postponing a trip to the U.S. to visit his hospitalized son Dzhokhar and collect Tamerlan’s body due to his spiking blood pressure.
Anzor Tsarnaev, 47, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he is “really sick” and his blood pressure had spiked.
He said last week that he planned to travel from Russia to the U.S. with the hope of seeing his younger son, who is under arrest, and burying his elder son, who was killed in a clash with police.
The news comes days after it was revealed that the suspects’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, was placed on a CIA watchlist 18 months before the Boston Marathon attack.
Anzor Tsarnaev confirmed that he is staying in Chechnya, a province in southern Russia, but did not specify whether he had been hospitalized.
Until Friday, Anzor Tsarnaev and the suspects’ mother had been living in the neighboring province of Dagestan.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva claimed she had to call an ambulance for her husband on Thursday but did not elaborate on what happened.
It was revealed last week that both parents have left their home in Dagestan for another part of Russia.
Anzor Tsarnaev is postponing a trip to the U.S. to visit his hospitalized son Dzhokhar and collect Tamerlan’s body due to his spiking blood pressure
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was never planning to accompany her husband to the U.S. because she faces felony shoplifting charges here.
On April 25, the parents held a bizarre press conference in which they claimed that the gruesome carnage of the Boston attacks, which killed three people and injured more than 280, were staged by the U.S. government.
“America took my kids away from me,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva cried.
“I’m sure my kids were not involved in anything.”
She went so far as to claim that the blood covering the streets after the blasts was in fact paint.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a police shootout on April 19 and 19-year-old Dzhokhar was taken into custody – alive, but badly injured – less than 24 hours later in Watertown, Massachusetts following a massive manhunt.
After spending nearly a week in a Boston hospital recovering from gunshot wounds sustained during a firefight with police, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was transferred to the Federal Medical Center Devens on April 26.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged in the Boston Marathon attacks and is facing a maximum sentence of the death penalty or life in prison.
The Tsarnaev family emigrated to the U.S. a decade ago, but both parents returned to Russia last year.
Anzor Tsarnaev said Thursday that he was planning to travel to the U.S. as soon as Friday, but hadn’t yet bought a plane ticket.
Banging the table in front of him, Anzor Tsarnaev said: “I am going to the United States. I want to say that I am going there to see my son, to bury the older one.
“I don’t have any bad intentions. I don’t plan to blow up anything. I am not angry at anyone. I want to go find out the truth.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, 45, also described a figure known only as “Misha” – who has been pinpointed as a source of radicalization for her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The mother said that he was a “very nice man”, of Armenian origin and living in Boston. “Misha” is also apparently a convert to the Islamic faith.
Anzor Tsarnaev has already been interviewed by Russian and American authorities – and would face further interviews if he ever gets to the U.S.
According to a new report, Russian authorities secretly recorded one of the Boston bombers discussing jihad with his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, in 2011 but failed to alert U.S. security agencies.
U.S. officials were told for the first time this week that two calls of note were discovered when the Russian internal security service, the RSB, were bugging calls at the Tsarnaevs family home in Dagestan, according to reports.
The recording picked up a “vague conversation” about jihad between either Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev and their mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the Associated Press reported.
It also picked up a phone call between Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and a man under FBI investigation living in Southern Russia.
American security sources anonymously revealed the information to the news agency and said if the calls had been flagged to the FBI, the agency may have conducted a more detailed investigation into the two men.
There was no evidence of a plot against America in the calls, according to the report.
Russian authorities secretly recorded one of the Boston bombers discussing jihad with his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, in 2011 but failed to alert U.S. security agencies
The news comes as the FBI attempts to defend itself against criticism that it failed to fully investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev that year.
In January, the FBI investigated and interviewed the family after Russian authorities flagged the elder bomber as a possible security threat.
It is not clear why the phone calls would not have been reported to American security officers as part of that briefing and the RSB were unavailable for comment.
Following their probe, the FBI concluded Tamerlan Tsarnaev did not present a threat and ceased monitoring him stating they saw no links to “terrorism activity, domestic or foreign”.
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R. South Carolina) said the agency had “dropped the ball” in that probe.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that the Russian government followed up their concerns over Tamerlan Tsarnaev six months later – asking the CIA for whatever information it had on him.
It is not clear what prompted the Russian request but the CIA review agreed with the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev posed no threat.
As a precaution they placed him on a 70,000 name watch-list called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE).
However, there were mistakes in both the spelling of his name and in his date of birth, so his six month departure from the country in 2012 wasn’t properly identified, according to the Times.
The first Russian request came in March 2011 through the FBI’s office in the United States Embassy in Moscow.
In a one-page request they said Tamerlan Tsarnaev “had changed drastically since 2010” and was preparing “to join unspecified underground groups”.
By June 2011 the FBI said they were satisfied he provided no threat and notified Russia.
They also added Tamerlan Tsarnaev to another watch-list – the Treasury Enforcement Communications System.
According to the Times, the FBI repeatedly went back to Russia to request more detail but they failed to provide any new information.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has come under increasing scrutiny in recent days given her outspoken denial of her sons’ actions and wild accusations of a cover-up.
She has repeatedly said her sons were framed and even claimed blood on the streets, after the bombings, was paint.
On Friday, it emerged agents now consider Zubeidat Tsarnaeva “a person of interest” in their investigation.
“She [Zubeidat Tsarnaeva] is a person of interest that we’re looking at to see if she helped radicalize her son, or had contacts with other people or other terrorist groups,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said.
Both sons appear to have had a close relationship with their mother.
Just before his death Tamerlan Tsarnaev made a final call to her saying: “Mama I love you.”
She was intending to travel with her husband to the U.S. last week but both delayed those plans.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said any suggestion she has links to terrorist activity are “lies and hypocrisy”.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was put on the CIA terrorist watchlist 18 months before the tragedy, US officials said on Friday.
Two lawmakers revealed Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is now considered a “person of interest” in the federal investigation into the Boston attack.
The lawmakers said that investigators have traveled to Dagestan, Russia, to learn more from close associates who knew the suspects’ mother.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva shot back, saying that claims that she had ties to terrorist activity were “lies and hypocrisy”.
In a series of bizarre media interviews, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has staunchly defended her sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who are accused of the terrorist attack on April 15 that left 3 dead and more than 260 injured.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, 45, has sparked outrage for her incendiary comments to the media and now officials say they are probing her possible involvement in the tragedy.
“She [Zubeidat Tsarnaeva]is a person of interest that we’re looking at to see if she helped radicalize her son, or had contacts with other people or other terrorist groups,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said investigators are looking into whether the mother encouraged her son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to embrace Islam extremism.
“The mother in my judgment has a role in his radicalization process in terms of her influence over him (and) fundamental views of Islam,” the Texas Republican told reporters.
Michael McCaul added that a team of US investigators had traveled to the Chechen region to interview sources who knew the family.
Unnamed officials have also reveled that the CIA asked for the Boston terror suspect 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 Russia’s request, one of the officials said.
The FBI found no ties to terrorism.
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.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva slammed officials who are trying to implicate her.
“It’s all lies and hypocrisy,” she told The Associated Press from Dagestan.
“I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I’ve never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism.”
A former official of the Russian government told Congress on Friday that Cold War-era distrust may have made American officials less inclined to act on tips from Russian security services about one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers.
Andranik Migranyan, a former member of the President Council of the Russian Federation, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Friday that Russia and the United States have long viewed each other warily.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was put on the CIA terrorist watchlist 18 months before the tragedy
Because of that, he said, American officials, in his words, “just didn’t pay enough attention” when Russian agencies asked the FBI and CIA to look into bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who immigrated to the Boston area in the past 11 years.
This new revelation shows that both major intelligence agencies were aware of his possible terrorist ties, as it has been reported that the Russians contacted the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev earlier that year.
The FBI conducted an investigation and did not find he had any terror connections.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was listed on the US government’s highly classified central database of people it views as potential terrorists.
But the list is so vast that authorities did not automatically keep close tabs on him, sources close to the bombing investigation said on Tuesday.
The details come as it’s revealed that Russian authorities had contacted the US government repeatedly about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s suspected ties to radical Islam, according to senators briefed on the FBI investigation.
The FBI has previously said that it was only contacted once regarding a potential threat posed by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but after an investigation, found nothing of concern.
Following a closed briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican representing North Carolina, said he believed that Russia alerted the United States about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in “multiple contacts”.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a police shootout early on April 19, while his younger brother Dzhokhar, 19, was captured later that day.
Prosecutors say the brothers, ethnic Chechens who had been living in the United States for more than a decade, planted two bombs that exploded near the finish line of the marathon on April 15.
Sources said Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s details were entered into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list, a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, because the FBI spoke to him in 2011 while investigating a Russian tip-off that he had become a follower of radical Islamists.
The FBI found nothing to suggest he was an active threat, but all the same placed his name on the TIDE list. The FBI has not said what it did find about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
But the database, which holds more than half a million names, is only a repository of information on people who US authorities see as known, suspected or potential terrorists from around the world.
Because of its huge size, US investigators do not routinely monitor everyone registered there, said officials familiar with the database.
As of 2008, TIDE contained more than 540,000 names, although they represented about 450,000 actual people, because some of the entries are aliases or different name spellings for the same person.
Fewer than 5% of the TIDE entries were US citizens or legal residents, according to a description of the database on the NCTC website.
The TIDE database is one of many federal security databases set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The database system has been criticized in the past for being too cumbersome, especially in light of an attempted attack on a plane in 2009. Intelligence and security agencies acknowledged in Congress that they had missed clues to the Detroit “underpants bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Officials said after the incident that he had been listed in the TIDE database.
Republican Senator Susan Collins said there were problems in sharing information ahead of the Boston bombings, too.
“This is troubling to me that this many years after the attacks on our country in 2001 that we still seem to have stovepipes that prevent information from being shared effectively,” she said.
Susan Collins was speaking after the FBI gave a closed-door briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, but she did not elaborate.
However, in the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the issue appeared to be that because he was not deemed an active threat, his name was only briefly on a list that would have triggered monitoring.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not put on the “no-fly” list that would have banned him from boarding an airplane in the United States. Neither was he named on the Selectee List, which would have required him to be given extra security screening at airports.
Another list, the Terrorist Screening Database, is a declassified version of the highly classified TIDE with fewer details about terrorist suspects. One source said Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on this list, too.
After being put in the TIDE system, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name was entered in another database, this one maintained by the Homeland Security Department’s Customs and Border Protection bureau which is used to screen people crossing US land borders and entering at airports or by sea.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was flagged on that database when he left the United States for Russia in January 2012 but no alarm was raised, presumably because the FBI had not identified him as a threat after the interview.
When he returned from Russia six months later, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had already been automatically downgraded in the border database because there was no new information that required him to continue to get extra attention.
So he did not get secondary inspection on his re-entry at New York’s JFK Airport. It was unclear exactly what the procedure was for such a downgrade.
Sean Joyce, deputy director of the FBI, defended the FBI’s performance in the Boston bombings at two closed hearings in Congress on Tuesday.
While government agencies declined to publicly discuss how the watch list system handled Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano disclosed some details at a separate, open hearing on immigration on Capitol Hill.
“Yes, the system pinged when he was leaving the United States. By the time he returned, all investigations – the matter had been closed,” Janet Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston marathon bombers, says she regrets that her family emigrated to the US, more than 10 years ago.
At a news conference in the Russian republic of Dagestan, where she now lives, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said America had taken her children away from her.
The Boston bombers’ mother also reiterated she was sure her sons were not involved in the attack.
It is being reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was added to a terrorism database 18 months ago at the CIA’s request.
Three people were killed and more than 260 wounded when two devices exploded at the Boston marathon on 15 April.
“I would prefer not to have lived in America. Why did I go there?” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said at Thursday’s news conference in Makhachkala, Dagestan.
At a news conference in the Russian republic of Dagestan, where she now lives, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said America had taken her children away from her
“I thought America would protect us. America took my kids away from me… I’m sure my kids were not involved in anything.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed a few days after the bombing during a shootout with police.
His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was captured and charged in connection with the attack.
The suspects’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, has said he will travel to the US on Thursday or Friday. The family wants to take Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body back to Russia.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, 45, has said she is still undecided whether to go, AP news agency reports, because she was charged with shoplifting in the US last year and fears arrest if she returns.
In questioning from his hospital bedside, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being treated for gunshot wounds, he has reportedly said he and his brother Tamerlan were angry about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2012, Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six months with relatives in Dagestan, which has an Islamist militant insurgency.
But congressmen said on Wednesday after closed-door briefings that the brothers are not believed to have had direct contact with a militant organization.
Meanwhile, there are questions as to whether the authorities did enough to prevent the bombings.
US media report that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was added in 2011 to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), at the request of the CIA.
The database contains as many as 745,000 entries; individuals on that list are not necessarily on the so-called terrorist watch list.
The FBI investigated after Russian authorities alerted US counterparts to the activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, saying he had become a follower of radical Islam.
About six months before the CIA requested his name be added to TIDE, the FBI asked the Russians for more information about the elder brother but received none, and closed its investigation.
US officials said earlier that their intelligence community had no information about threats to the marathon ahead of last week’s attacks.
After a classified briefing at the House intelligence committee on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger said he believed the FBI was not at fault.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has launched into a bizarre rant in which she claims she does not care if she or her youngest son are to be killed by US authorities.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who now lives in Dagestan, Russia, said in an emotional telephone interview that she believes her sons, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, have been framed for the bombings.
The suspects’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, has already been interviewed by Russian and American authorities and will make his way to the United States along with his ex-wife as early as Thursday.
Their eldest son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a shootout with police in Watertown, Massachusetts on Friday, while Dzhokhar, 19, is in hospital recovering from a wound to the neck.
“If they are going to kill him, I don’t care,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told CNN of Dzhokhar.
“My oldest one is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care is my youngest one is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this.
‘And I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu akbar!”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has launched into a bizarre rant saying she does not care if she or her son Dzhokhar are to be killed by US authorities
While Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was reportedly injured from a self-inflicted gunshot wound as he sought to hide from police in a boat parked in a backyard, his mother said she does not believe this account.
“You know what I think? I think now they will try to make my Dzhokhar guilty because they took away his voice, his ability to talk to the world… They did not want the truth to come out,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said.
She added that the only reason her sons were targeted was because they were Muslim, adding that she saw footage of Tamerlan Tsarnaev being killed “really cruelly”.
U.S. authorities are on their way to speak with Zubeidat Tsarnaeva in the aftermath of the bombings.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, could be jailed if she returns to the US to see her hospitalized son, it has been revealed.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, 45, now lives in Dagestan, Russia
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a gunbattle with cops on Friday. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is in fair condition in a Boston hospital where he is being treated for injuries sustained in the same shootout.
ABC News reported on Tuesday that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva failed to show up at a court hearing stemming from a July 2012 arrest for shoplifting.
So if she returns to the US to visit her hospitalized son Dzhokhar or make burial arrangements for Tamerlan, she could be arrested on an outstanding warrant.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva allegedly stole $1,600 worth of clothes from a Massachusetts Lord & Taylor store.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, could be jailed if she returns to the US to see her hospitalized son
She was charged with two counts of malicious/wanton damage and defacement to property after allegedly swiping the merchandise from the retailer’s Natick, Massachusetts location in June 2012.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was due in court on October 25 last year for a hearing in the case, but never showed up.
The Lord & Taylor location is not the same as the one on Boyleston Street in Boston, where a surveillance camera captured what police say is her younger son dropping a pressure cooker bomb that was hidden inside a backpack.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva additionally faces questioning by US investigators, who have traveled to Dagestan to speak with her.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, watches the video of her dead son’s mutilated body and cries, her lawyer revealed on Tuesday, after it emerged that she is to be questioned by US investigators.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva appeared publicly outside her home for the first time since her sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were named as suspects. She was ushered past journalists and into a taxi, which sped away.
US investigators traveled to southern Russia today to speak to Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and her husband Anzor Tsarnaev, an American Embassy official said.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim province in Russia’s Caucasus, where Islamic militants have waged an insurgency against Russian security sources for years.
The family’s lawyer Heda Saratova, asked for the family to be left alone and said that the parents had just seen pictures of the mutilated body of their elder son Tamerlan Tsarnaev and were not up to speaking with anyone at the moment.
“The mother is in very bad shape,” Heda Saratova said.
“She watches the video [of Tamerlan Tsarnaev] and cries.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva appeared publicly outside her home in Dagestan for the first time since her sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were named as suspects
The trip by the US team was made possible because of Russian government cooperation with the FBI investigation into the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are accused of setting off the bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 180 others on April 15.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a police shootout, while his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar was captured alive but badly wounded.
The embassy official said he could not confirm whether the US investigators had already talked to the suspects’ parents.
“Naturally, the parents are not ready to meet with anyone because the grief is enormous,” Russian official Zaurbek Sadakhanov told a crowd of journalist in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.
“They … are asking to be left alone, at least for a while, to be able to recover.
“As to the case, I think that detectives and policemen in the United States are knowledgeable and will find out what happened in an objective and unbiased way.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is from Dagestan, while the suspects’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev is from neighboring Chechnya.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had spent little time in either place before the family moved to the US a decade ago, but Tamerlan was in Russia for six months last year.
The father of the two Boston bombing suspects will apparently travel to the US later this week in order to seek “justice and the truth.
Anzor Tsarnaev says he has “lots of questions for the police” and is keen ‘to clear up many things’”when he arrives from his home in Makhachkala in Russia.
He had previously said that he would return to America this week in the wake of the death of his elder son Tamerlan and the arrest of 19-year-old Dzhokhar.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva added that the family hoped to bring Tamerlan’s body back to Russia.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were “failed” by their parents, especially their “controlling” mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who encouraged their move towards Islamic radicalization, claims their uncle.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looked up to their mother as an “angel” but, according to one of their uncles, she was the one who allowed them to be introduced to hardline Islamic views.
Boston marathon bombers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, claimed that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva allowed a firebrand cleric into their house to give one-on-one sermons to Tamerlan over the kitchen table during which he claimed he could talk to demons and perform exorcisms.
It appears that the boys’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev never stood up to his wife as she was the “boss” of their house.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s story began in the mid 1980s when a young Kazakh soldier called Anzor Tsarnaev, now 47, met his future wife Zubeidat , now 45, whilst completing his two years of military service.
Anzor Tsarnaev was aged 19 or 20 at the time and Zubeidat 17 or 18. She was from Dagestan, which borders Kazakhstan to the West.
They got married and had four children.
The oldest child was Tamerlan, followed by daughters Bella, now 24, Alilina, now 22, and finally Dzhokhar.
In 2002 Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva came to the US on tourist visas with a young Dzhokhar and claimed asylum.
The rest of the family joined them a year later, having spent 12 months living with Ruslan Tsarni at his home in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, where they used to go to private school and were visited every week by the grandmother.
Ruslan Tsarni recalled Tamerlan Tsarnaev being a “joyful guy with a lot of ambition” during that time.
The boys’ uncle said: “They grew up nice because their grandmother was close to them, our family was close to them.
“Grandmother kept them so they were always under supervision.”
When the Tsarnaevs moved to Cambridge their new life was not much of an American dream.
With minimal language skills their parents had to take whatever work they could get so their mother began offering facials in their cramped home.
At one point there were at least seven people living in a humble semi-detached property.
Another uncle, Alvi Tsarnaev, did minimum wage shifts whilst Anzor started working two jobs including at a car mechanic.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev tried to make a career out of being a boxer but failed and dropped out of Bunker Hill Community College.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev however seemed to excel at school and eventually won a place at the University of Massachusetts where he was studying Marine Biology.
According to Alvi Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar led a quiet life and never went anywhere other than his home on Norfolk St and his school.
Ruslan Tsarni had always had Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ear and said that like the other children he “came to America for a bright future”.
He remembers seeing him in 2006 when he was 21 and had just graduated high school.
Rusland Tsarni said: “He was asking me questions and I was happy to give him the answers. I told him the best way to start your way in a country, I’d start with the Army. Give [your country] something.
“We’ve not been brought here, give to it.
“I told him that you don’t have good English so you can’t make it to a good school, but later. He can go there, while you serve you improve your English and with English you improve your education and the Army will give you the path.
“At the time he seriously considered it. And in 2009 when I said why are you doing nothing, join the Army, why don’t you be useful, he laughed at me for killing our brother Muslims.”
That year turned out to be a turning point.
After that Ruslan Tarni could no longer act as a proxy parent as he always had done.
Ruslan Tsarni said: “The change of the older boy, one of the biggest causes is her.
“First she started playing into this religious c*** they say is a devotion to Islam.”
Ruslan Tsarni dismissed Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who was arrested last year for stealing $1,600 of lingerie from a department store, as a “bad character”.
Life took a bad turn for one of her daughters who, according to reports, was set up by Zubeidat Tsarnaeva in an arranged marriage.
It fell apart two years later after her husband supposedly beat her up. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s other daughter was also married but got divorced too. Both have one child that lives with the father’s family.
Ruslan Tsarni said: “I never liked her, but not for personal reasons. These kids, I thought she’s not doing enough. She’s not doing them right, especially when they grew up.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva may encouraged her sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev move towards Islamic radicalization
According to Ruslan Tsarni, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radicalization was well underway by 2007 – right under the nose of his mother.
He claimed that the man responsible was a cleric aged around 30 called Misha and that he was an Armenian who, unusually for such a largely Christian people, had converted to Islam.
As far as he knew Misha was based in a mosque that was a short drive from Cambridge and that he was new to Islam.
A leader from the 50,000 strong Armenian community in Boston however cast doubt on the claim.
The Rev Gregory Haroutunian said he be “stunned” if anyone in the area would have had such hatred for America.
Ruslan Tsarni said: “People who lack morals but have big ambition always want some attention to themselves or certain respect to themselves.
“All they do is just change a tyre. You wear a hijab and you start dropping every other word Insha’Allah and all of a sudden that makes you a godly person.
“She [Zubeidat Tsarnaeva] supported it [in the boys), some really bad person [started it].
“She was not able to teach them anything. The introduction came from new Muslim convert of Armenian descent.
“He claimed to be an exorcist who is fighting with demons.”
It was in 2007 one evening around midnight as Anzor Tsarnaev came home from work to find the cleric in his kitchen, claimed Ruslan Tsarni.
“It was all the same talking, God, God, how he’s talking to demons, how he’s an exorcist, how he’s healing people. Tamerlan was absolutely in his possession. All around people considered him just another prick.
“Then my brother comes in from work, very late and Anzor is talking to his wife saying what is this person doing here so late?
“Tell him to get the hell out. And she says: <<You’d better shut up, this person is teaching wise things to your son>>. This is the mother. After that Tamerlan went over his place, he changed his views. It started from people like that.”
Ruslan Tsarni said he offered to send Tamerlan Tsarnaev to a school in Almaty and pay for it, but he declined. He gave him $3,000 to buy a car and drive to his home in Maryland just to watch over the house, but he did not do it.
The uncle said he tried “anything but not to be with his parents” because his opinion of them was so low.
He said that he would get phone calls from Ailina Tsarnaeva’s college saying she was in detention, having already been told by Zubeidat that she was in the library. Similar instances happened with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
By 2009, Ruslan Tsarni had had enough. He told Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and her family they were no longer welcome in his home. Only his brother would be allowed in were they to visit.
It was the last time he would speak to his nephew.
A family friend said that the split happened because Ruslan Tsarni became frustrated when his attempts to change the direction of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s life fell on deaf ears.
As Muslims, the way they traditionally resolved such disputes was that men would talk to men and that words would be said to the wife and the children.
As Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was in command in her house, such pleas fell on deaf ears when made to Anzor Tsarnaev.
A family friend said: “It drove a wedge between them. Ruslan couldn’t help Tamerlan because Anzor told him to stay away from his wife and not tell her what to do.
“It was very upsetting for Ruslan. He loves Dzhokhar and Tamerlan so much and to not be able to do anything really upset him.
“Anzor is so in love with his wife that he will do anything that she says. He will go to the ends of the Earth to be with her.
“For Anzor, them being together is more important to him than anything else.”
At some point Anzor Tsarnaev appears to have moved back to Kazakhstan, or possibly Dagestan.
Some reports have suggested Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva separated but relatives claimed that they are still together.
The last time Ruslan Tsarni spoke to Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in August 2009. He did not even go to his wedding to Katherine Russell, with whom Tamerlan Tsarnaev has a 3-year-old daughter, and found out about it a year or so later.
Reflecting on their last conversation, Ruslan Tsarni said: “I asked him why he wasn’t at work, what happened with your college, why are you not in college.
“He changed his life views and he’s on the path of God…he was all the time in the path of Jihad.
“My brother lost control of it [his family] a long time ago. The mother was very influential. She says they would share everything with her, she had a very strong influence over them. She was controlling them.
“Tamerlan absolutely controlled Dzhokhar, he was under his influence. This is how in our tradition, the older one has to control but take care of the younger ones.
“The taking care didn’t happen and he wasted his brother’s life and he made him involved in this massacre.
“Me as an uncle I hold responsible for what turned out with these kids, the parents. Had Tamerlan been closer to me, had I heard any of his talking I would have cut it and been harsh with him.”
With no uncle to watch over him, Tamerlan Tsarnaev appears to have become even more radical and, on a personal level, more angry with the world.
In 2009 Tamerlan Tsarnaev was arrested after slapping his girlfriend and leaving her crying “hysterically”, according to the arrest report, because she suspected he was cheating on her.
In 2012, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar began attending a local mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Centre, but were not regulars.
About three months ago Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out after he shouted at the imam during a Friday prayer service because he held up a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. and said he was a good man who they should emulate.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev called him a Kaffir, or non-believer, and said: “You cannot mention this guy because he’s not a Muslim!”
Alvi Tsarnaev said that Ruslan Tsarni gave Tamerlan and Dzhokhar a great start in life and ‘put those children in a good place’.
But he also agreed that when it came to family affairs, they treated their mother “like an angel” – and that what she said was the law.
Alvi Tsarnaev said: “They would do anything for their mother. They are not going to listen to their father but they are going to listen to their mother.
“They are very close to their mother….she is the family boss. She is the boss in the family.
“Usually in Muslim people the boss is the man, but in their family, she is the boss.”
Alvi Tsarnaev also revealed that the hate which swept up his two nephews is now reached his doorstep too.
Since the bombings he has received a string of voicemail messages which have left him deeply disturbed.
He has deleted most of them, but the one he has saved is a man’s voice which says: “Leave our country you Cechnic Chechen Muslim motherf******s.”
For her part Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is unrepentant about encouraging Tamerlan to become more religious and even brags about how it has “changed” her for the better.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the Wall St Journal that at Tamerlan’s request she wore Islamic clothes around the house, even though her husband did not want her to.
She said: “I told Tamerlan that we are Muslim, and we are not practicing our religion, and how can we call ourselves Muslims?
“And that’s how Tamerlan started reading about Islam, and he started praying, and he got more and more and more into his religion.
“I started reading and started learning, I started reading with my Tamerlan.”
In fact their bond was so close, that it was her that Tamerlan Tsarnaev chose to phone in the early hour of Friday morning in the middle of the gun battle with police that would claim his life.
With a suicide vest round his neck and explosions going off around him, Tamerlan Tsarnaev dialed his mother’s number and said: “The police, they have started shooting at us, they are chasing us.”
Then, finally, before hanging up Tamerlan Tsarnaev said: “Mama, I love you.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev called his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, during his final moments to as he engaged in a furious gun battle with police early on Friday morning, it has emerged.
“The police, they have started shooting at us, they are chasing us,” Tamerlan Tsarnaev reportedly told his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva.
At the time the Boston bomber was hurling pressure cooker bombs at officers in the suburb of Watertown as he and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fired more than 200 rounds.
Then, finally, before hanging up, Tamerlan Tsarnaev said: “Mama, I love you.”
When he ran out of bullet, police say Tamerlan Tsarnaev charged at police, before officers tackled him and he was finally run over by his brother Dzhokar.
Days earlier, reports The Wall Street Journal, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva had called her son after the bombings, concerned about his safety.
Shockingly, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had merely shrugged off her concern.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev called his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, during his final moments to as he engaged in a furious gun battle with police
“Mama, why are you worrying?” he laughed.
This was not, however, the first time Tamerlan Tsarnaev dealt in troubling telephone calls.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and her husband Anzor Tsarnaev have claimed that their son Tamerlan received a call from the FBI accusing him of the attack, to which he responded: “That’s your problem.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed following a shoot out with the police on April 19, called his mother two or three days after the Boston Marathon bombings to tell her about the call from the FBI, his father claimed.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s parents have claimed that he received a call from the FBI accusing him of the Boston Marathon bombings two or three days after the attack.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed following a shoot out with the police on Friday, called his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, two or three days after the marathon bombings to tell her about the call from the FBI, his father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said.
The claims, reported by Channel 4 News, reveal how Tamerlan Tsarnaev believed that the FBI was watching him. His mother previously said he had been followed by the FBI for five years.
Channel 4 News suggested that, while it was unlikely the FBI had called the suspect to accuse him of the heinous crime, it was perhaps his way of preparing his parents for the news of his involvement.
While it seems unlikely, if the claim is true, it raises questions over how the FBI handled the case.
The agency has already come under fire for reportedly failing to stop brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev before they planted two bombs at the finish line of the marathon, killing three and injuring more than 180.
It has emerged that Russian authorities alerted the FBI about their concerns over Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s links after he was spotted speaking to an Islamic militant six times at a mosque in Dagestan last year.
Now his parents are planning to visit the US to see their surviving son, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a boat following his older brother’s death.
Anzor Tsarnaev have claimed that the FBI called his son Tamerlan Tsarnaev accusing him of the Boston Marathon bombings two or three days after the attack
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told ABC World News in a tearful phone interview that she fears her son will receive the death penalty.
“I lost two sons,” she said through tears over the phone.
“My family is in the dirt.”
The grieving mother did not say when she and her husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, plan to travel to the U.S.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told an ABC reporter based in southern Russia that she fears she will be unable to do so, despite her having an American passport, because she is now the parent of a suspected terrorist.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s parents spent the day hiding from the crowd of journalist that flooded their neighborhood in the remote Russian region of Dagestan, according to ABC News.
Neighbors who did speak to the press said the Tsarnaev family had no noticeable ties to Islamic fundamentalism or terrorist factions.
One neighbor said that there was no fanaticism among the family members living there and that Anzor Tsarnaev was not too religious.
In her phone call with ABC News reporter Kirit Radia, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva reiterated the wild claims her husband has made in previous interviews that their two sons were framed by the US government.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said her oldest son, Tamerlan, was investigated two years ago by the FBI only because “he loved Islam” and that he “didn’t do anything bad”.
The FBI said in a statement released Friday that it had investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of a foreign government. The FBI did not reveal which country’s government that was.
“The request stated that it was based on information that he 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 statement said.
The FBI said that in response to the request the bureau culled through its databases and interviewed both Tamerlan Tsarnaev and members of his family, but were unable to find any evidence that he was connected to a terrorist organization.
“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 FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government,” the FBI’s statement read.
“They were all afraid of Tamerlan” his mother told ABC News referring to the US government.
“They wanted to eliminate him as a threat because he was in love with Islam. For the last five years they were following him.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said the anxiety of losing both her sons has caused her to feel so sick she needs to call for an ambulance every two and a half hours.
“I don’t know how to live like this,” she said.
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