Russians Wiretap Recorded Tamerlan Tsarnaev Talking Jihad with His Mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva

The Russians secretly recorded in a wiretap Tamerlan Tsarnaev discussing Jihad with his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. Russian authorities had previously turned over information to the United States that it had on Tamerlan and his mother. The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens who emigrated from southern Russia to the Boston area over the past 11 years. However, they did not turn over this wiretap. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva were on US terror watch lists and questioned by the FBI, yet on May 1, 2013 Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhohkar, detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260. The question remains, why did  Vladmir Putin and the Russians not provide this piece of information when warning the US about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s extremists actions? We will never know if the FBI would have acted on such intel or whether it would have prevented the bombing. Then again, we do not know if it would have either.

Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call.

In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

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.

In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn’t speak the language there, according to the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S.

As reported at CBS News, in another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case.