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25 April 2013 Last updated at 03:56 GMT
One of the Boston bomb suspects was added to a
terrorism database 18 months ago at the request of the CIA, officials have
told US media.
The FBI has already said it investigated
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, but had found no evidence of a threat.
Tsarnaev was killed during a police chase last
week. His brother Dzhokhar, 19, is in custody over the bombs.
Three people were killed and more than 260
wounded when two devices exploded at the Boston Marathon on 15 April.
A US politician earlier confirmed the bombs
were set off by remote control.
But the devices were not sophisticated and
apparently had to be triggered from a few streets away.
FBI ‘not at fault’
Officials said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been
added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (Tide) on the request
of the CIA.
The database contains as many as 745,000
entries, and individuals on that list are not necessarily on the so-called
terrorist watch list.
The Russian authorities had alerted US counterparts
to the activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose family has its origins in the
war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya.
About six months before the CIA requested his
name be added to Tide, the FBI asked the Russians for more information about
Tamerlan Tsarnaev but received none, and closed its investigation.
The authorities earlier said the US
intelligence community had no information about threats to the marathon ahead
of the 15 April attacks.
After a classified briefing in the House
intelligence committee on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman Dutch
Ruppersberger said he believed the FBI was not at fault.
“I feel, based on the testimony today,
that the FBI did exactly what they would do and they followed through the
protocols that were necessary once they got that information,” Mr
Ruppersberger told reporters.
He also said he had been told the bombs were
detonated with a “garage door opener-type of device”.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was injured during the
police manhunt and remains in hospital in a fair condition.
Officers captured him as he hid in a boat
covered by a tarpaulin in a garden in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Officials initially had said he exchanged
gunfire with police for more than an hour before he was captured on Friday.
But the Associated Press quoted two unnamed
officials as saying Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been unarmed when he was captured.
Suspects’ parents arriving ‘
The younger brother has been charged in
hospital with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of
property resulting in death.
He could be sentenced to death if convicted on
either count.
In bedside questioning, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has
said he and his brother were angry about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the brothers are not believed to have had
direct contact with a militant organisation, politicians said after
closed-door briefings.
It is suspected the brothers became
radicalised online.
The suspects’ parents, Anzor Tsarnaev and
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, are due to arrive in the US on Thursday, Russian media
reported.
The Tsarnaev family has origins in the
predominantly Muslim republic of Chechnya in southern Russia.
The brothers had been living in the US for
about a decade at the time of the attack.
In 2012, Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six months
with relatives in Dagestan, another Russian republic, which has an Islamist
militant insurgency.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22289200
—
IZAKOVIC
http://www.deepspace4.com
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