MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - The older suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings vaguely discussed “jihad,” a Muslim holy war against infidels, with his mother in a 2011 phone conversation secretly recorded by Russian officials, CBS News reported on Sunday.
In early 2011, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) intercepted a conversation between now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the ethnic Chechens who had emigrated from southern Russia to the Boston area over the past 11 years, according to CBS.
The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn’t speak the language there, CBS said.
In another conversation, the mother of the Boston bombing suspects was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, CBS said.
The wiretapped discussions were turned over by Russian authorities to the United States in the past week, according to CBS.
Had the conversations been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family, CBS said.
As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June 2011, according to CBS.
Two years later, the US authorities say Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhohkar, detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260. Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout while Dzhohkar is under arrest and has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction, which could carry the death penalty.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has previously denied that she or her sons were involved in terrorism. She has claimed her sons have been framed by US authorities.
