The mother of the men who bombed the Boston Marathon was placed on a US terror watch list 18 m🌱onths before the attack — and is now being eyed for potentially radicalizing her oldest son, officials said yesterday.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and her now-dead son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were put on the list in 2011 after Rus🌄sian officials informed the CIA that the two ethnic Chechens were Islamic ext🐬remists who may pose a threat to their native Russia, officials said.
Officials have disclosed that Tamerlan’s name was listed, raising questions about whether authorities should have eyed him more closely before the 🐽April 15 attack that killed three and injured 260.
The presence of his mother’s name on the list, which should have flagged her travel to and from the Uni꧅ted States, is now drawing simila🉐r questions.
Both mother and son were looked at for terror ties six months before they lanཧded on the watch list because Russian officials were concerned about tꦆhem.
But the FBI closed the cases after find💙ing no evidence.
Yesterday, a top congressman said Zubeidat is now the focus of a House investigation into whether she turned Tamerlan, 26, into a radical jihadist who enlistౠed his brother, Dzhokhar Tsa෴rnaev, 19, for the bombings.
Zubeidat, “in my judgment, has a role in his radicalization process i💃n terms of her influence over him [and] fundamental views of Islam,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul.
McCaul (R-Texas) said US investigators have been deployed t𒁃o interview other Chechens in Russia, “and it’s my hope they can get some evidence of that” influence.
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), a top member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Zubeidat “is a person of interest tha♏t we’re looking at to see if she helped radicalize her son, or had contacts 🌜with other people or other terrorist groups.”
Zubeidat has adamantly den🐻ied that either Tamerlan or Dzhokhar committed the maratho꧂n attack — despite Dzhokhar telling investigators they bombed the finish line to avenge US wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes💫terday, she denied being a terrorist, but said her presenc♓e on the list wasn’t surprising.
“It’s all𝄹 lies and hypocrisy,” she told The Associated Press from the Russian republiꦓc of Dagestan. “I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children.”
“People know me as a regular person, and I’ve never been mixed up in any criminal in⛦tentions,🏅 especially any link to terrorism.”
Zubeidat, who has not been charged with a terror act, is wanted in Massachusetts for jumping bail on a shoplifting rไap.
Tamerlan was slai💙n April 19 in a police shootout. He had killed an MIT cop as he and Dzhokhar fled in a stolen Mercedes loaded with six homemade bombs they planned to set off in Times Square.
Dzhokhar, shot in his neck and elsewhere, was caught 20 hours later hiding in a boat stored in a back yard in Watert♊own, Mass.
Late Thursday, Dzhokhar moved from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston to the Federal Medical Center at Fort Devens, a facility 40 miles away that treats fedཧeral prisoners.
His presence at Beth Israel upset some bombing victims who were being treated t🔯here.
Yesterday, investig🔥ators scoured a landfill in New Bedford, Mass., near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, which Dzh𝓰okhar attended.
CNN r♛eported they were looking for his laptop and other evidence that he had suggested had been du🦹mped there.
Also yesterday, The Daily Beast reported Dzhokhar had told investigators he and Tamerlan were influenced by Internet sermons of the US-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011.