Dead brother figured in terror database‚ claim US officials

Reuters

Anzor Tsarnaev (left) and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, parents of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, attending a press conference in Makhachkala on Thursday. They denied their sons had planted the bombs at the Boston marathon.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON: The federal government added the name of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect to a terrorist database 18 months before the deadly explosions, US officials said. Five days after the US determined who was allegedly behind the deadly Boston marathon terror attacks, Washington is piecing together what happened and whether there were any
unconnected dots buried in US government files that, if

connected, could have prevented the bombings.

The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told authorities that his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, only recently recruited him to be part of the attack, two American officials said yesterday.

The CIA, however, named Tamerlan to a huge, classified database of known and suspected terrorists 18 months ago, officials said, an acknowledgment that will undoubtedly prompt congressional inquiry about whether the Obama administration adequately investigated tips from Russia that Tsarnaev had posed a security threat.

Shortly after the bombings, US officials said the intelligence community had no information about threats to the marathon before the April 15 explosions.

The US officials who spoke to the AP were close to the investigation but insisted on anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the case with reporters.

Investigators have said the brothers, Russian-born ethnic Chechens, appeared to have been radicalised through jihadist materials on the Internet and have found no evidence tying them to a terrorist group.

The CIA made the request to add Tamerlan’s name to the terrorist database after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that he had become a follower of radical Islam. About six months earlier, the FBI had separately investigated Tsarnaev, also at Russia’s request, but the FBI found no ties to terrorism, officials said.

Officials say they never found the type of derogatory information on Tsarnaev that would have elevated his profile among counterterrorism investigators and placed him on the terror watch list.