MOSCOW, April 29 (RIA Novosti) – A senior Russian lawmaker claimed on Twitter on Monday that the US authorities had deliberately been inactive over the Tsarnaev brothers, although they had long known that the suspected Boston Marathon bombers posed a threat.
“The United States knew of the danger presented by the Tsarnaevs but did not do anything,” Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s international affairs committee, tweeted.
“Someone apparently wanted to use them,” he wrote on his microblog. “I can’t believe the FBI was so naive.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, are suspected of planting bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 that killed three people and injured more than 200. Tamerlan died in a shootout with police, while Dzhokhar is in a prison hospital in Massachusetts. The brothers had roots in Russia’s restive southern republics, but had emigrated to the United States about 10 years before the bombings.
CBS News reported on April 26 citing officials that back in fall 2011, the CIA had asked for Tamerlan and his mother to be added to a terrorist database after Russia contacted the agency saying both had become religious militants. The FBI had reportedly previously interviewed them – also at Russia’s request – and found no connections to terrorism.
Inclusion in the US terrorism database does not mean a person is suspected of terrorist activity or that he or she is under surveillance or subject to travel restrictions, according to the website of the US National Counterterrorism Center, which manages the database.
