AP
A file photo of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased Chechen-origin suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing case.
FBI revives claim that Russian authorities did not share information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased Chechen-origin suspect
The U.S. and Russia continued to trade blame between their investigative
agencies on the Boston Marathon bombing case, with the Federal Bureau
of Investigation this week reviving a prior claim that Russian
authorities did not share information with it on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the
deceased Chechen-origin suspect.
According to a report in the New York Times citing an Inspector
General’s report, “The Russian government declined to provide the FBI
with information about [Tamerlan] that would most likely have led to
more extensive scrutiny of him at least two years before the attack.”
Quoting unnamed officials, the Times added that the Inspector
General’s report found that “it was only after the bombing occurred last
April that the Russians shared with the FBI the additional
intelligence, including information from a telephone conversation the
Russian authorities had intercepted between Mr. Tsarnaev and his mother
in which they discussed Islamic jihad.”
However, not many media reports on this subject noted that the claims
linked to the FBI were not new, fewer still the Boston bombing case was
hobbled as much by blockages to information sharing domestically between
U.S. investigative agencies such as the FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security, as by limited information from Russia.
Lax cooperation
For example, last year The Hindu reported that even a decade
after al-Qaeda’s devastating attack on the U.S. on September 11 2001,
lax intelligence cooperation seems to dog law enforcement agencies,
leading Senator Susan Collins, a top Republican on the Homeland Security
Committee, to say what “is troubling to me [is] 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 not
only among agencies but also within the same agency in one case.”
The FBI at the time had put out a statement that it received a Russian
alert in 2011 that Tamerlan “was a follower of radical Islam and a
strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he
prepared to leave the U.S. for travel to the country’s region to join
unspecified underground groups.” This statement was repeated in the
Inspector General’s report, as quoted by the Times.
The FBI also said its subsequent interview with Tamerlan and a search
for information did not yield evidence of terrorism activity. Since then
the FBI also “requested but did not receive more specific or additional
information,” from Russia, the agency added.
However, the fact that appeared to receive less public attention was
that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had “multiple” contacts
with the FBI and at least one was after October 2011, according to
reported remarks of Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican
who is also on the Intelligence Committee. From the evidence available
so far, it appears that information “was not shared with the original
team who interviewed Tamerlan,” or with other DHS officials.
The allegations in the report criticising Russian intelligence services
come on the back of deteriorating relations between Washington and
Moscow, especially in the wake of Russia annexing Crimea from Ukraine,
and, last year, granting temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the
whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor who
supplied media with confidential documents on the NSA’s surveillance
activities.
VIENNA:
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said its
monitors would try again Saturday to enter Crimea, two days after being
prevented from doing so.
According to the Times of India, Pakistani actress Veena Malik has tied
the knot with businessman Asad Bashir Khattak once again. However, this
time it was an was an American style wedding, as Malik wanted.The
couple, who earlier had a court marriage in Dubai on December 25th,
married again last night in US.They held their grand white reception in
one of the world's most luxurious cruise, called 'Spirit of Washington'.
Only close friends and relatives ...
