Pending: Homeland Security hadn't granted US
citizenship to Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, pictured left
in 2010, and right, last Monday, minutes before the attack
By
Beth Stebner and Daily Mail Reporter
The Department of Homeland
Security was dragging its feet on processing Boston bombing suspect
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's U.S. citizenship after a routine background check
revealed he had been questioned by the FBI in 2011.
Tamerlan,
26, filed an application for citizenship six months ago but immigration
officials had not yet made a decision on his case at the time of the
Boston Marathon bombings.
Authorities
knew the alleged bomber had a domestic violence charge on his record
but the fact he had been grilled by federal agents is reportedly what
threw up red flags, halting the progress of his application.
It's not clear what the 26-year-old, who was killed early Friday, was told about why his application was facing delays.
Official reported on Friday that the F.B.I. interviewed the older Tsarnaev brother in January 2011 at the request of the Russian government, which suspected that he had ties to Chechen terrorists.
They said this decision to delay his application proved his encounter with the F.B.I. did not go unnoticed by the Department of Homeland security.
According to The New York Times, the
terror suspect's application, presented on September 5, also prompted
the FBI to do 'additional investigation' of him this year. They didn't reveal how far the probe had gone or what it covered.
Tamerlan's
papers were submitted just days after his brother, Dzhokhar A.
Tsarnaev, 19, had his own citizenship application approved.
According
to the Times, officials with Homeland Security contacted the FBI late
last year to learn more about its interview with the terror suspect and
the agency reported its conclusion that he did not present a threat.
However,
immigration officials did not move to approve or deny the application,
choosing instead to leave it open for 'additional review.'
On Sunday, U.S. lawmakers from both parties criticized the FBI for failing to spot the extremist leanings of Tamerlan Tsarnaev
and demanded to know why the agency did not at least follow up with the
elder brother following a six-month trip to Russia in 2012.
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-South
Carolina) went so far as to say 'the ball was dropped' by the federal
agency by either missing 'a lot of things' during their initial
investigation of the suspect or did not allow investigators to 'follow
up in a sound, solid way.'
Outspoken: New York Sen. Charles Schumer, left,
D-New York, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, raised questions
on CNN over the FBI's follow-up on the elder Tsarnaev brother
Under
the barrage of attacks, the FBI has stood by their initial public
statement issued earlier last week, which said that the agency closed
their investigation on the ethnic Chechen in 2011 after failing to find
any ‘terrorism activity, domestic or foreign.’
On Sunday, House of Representatives
Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul wrote to the FBI and
other officials asking why Tamerlan Tsarnaev did not raise suspicions
after Russia asked the bureau to investigate him two years ago.
'Because if he was on the radar and
they let him go, he's on the Russians' radar, why wasn't a flag put on
him, some sort of customs flag?,' McCaul, a Texas Republican, said on
CNN's 'State of the Union.’
'And I'd like to know what intelligence Russia has on him as well.'
Sen.
Charles Schumer (D-New York) was largely supportive of the FBI’s
efforts, but questioned why Tamerlan wasn’t interviewed upon his return
from Russia, where he had been for six months in 2012.
‘There
were things on his website that indicated that he had been
radicalized,’ Schumer said. ‘I think there’s a lot of questions that
have to be answered.’
Dwelling: The Tsarnaev brothers lived in this nondescript house in Cambridge, just across the river from Boston
Frequent: Tamerlan was said to often visit the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, pictured
The
FBI interviewed Tsarnaev in 2011, shortly after Russia's Federal
Security Service asked the agency to look into him as a possible
Islamist radical who might soon travel to Russia. It was unclear before
yesterday which foreign country had tipped off the FBI.
When contacted, the FBI referred
MailOnline to the statement it issued on April 19, saying the FBI’s
search into Tamerlan’s records, travel history, and internet use yielded
no results.
Meanwhile, the organization has
vehemently refuting a claim by the mother of the Tsarnaev brothers who
said the bureau had spoken to Tamerlan following the two bombs exploding
at last Monday’s marathon.
FBI
spokesman Michael Kortan told the Associated Press Sunday that the
interviews in 2011 with Tamerlan and family members were the agency’s
only contact with the
bombing suspect. The Tsarnaev’s parents, who live
in Russia.
Less than a
year after the FBI interview, Tsarnaev did in fact travel to the
volatile Dagestan region of southern Russia on a six-month trip out of
the United States. Much of what Tsarnaev did on that trip is still a
mystery to U.S. investigators, Reuters reported.
Neighbors
contacted by Reuters say Tsarnaev spent at least a few weeks in
Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region in the North Caucasus mountains
where Islamist militants have long been a thorn in the side of
governments in Moscow.
Guarded: Police guard the entrance to Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center Saturday, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is
being treated, rooms away from 11 of the bombing victims
Republican Representative Peter King
of New York told 'Fox News Sunday' he wondered why the FBI did not take
more action after Tsarnaev returned to the United States last year and
put statements on his website 'talking about radical imams.'
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not put on any
no-fly list of suspected terrorists, U.S. officials said. But his brush
with the FBI did raise concerns when he applied for U.S. citizenship
last year, a source close to the bombing investigation said.
Officials
of the Homeland Security Department decided to give his application
extra scrutiny because of the FBI interview and also due to an
allegation against him of domestic abuse on a girlfriend in 2009, the
source said. The citizenship application was still under consideration
when Monday's bombing happened.
Tamerlan
Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with U.S. police. and his brother
Dzhokhar, 19, remained hospitalized in serious condition on Sunday,
unable to speak. Three people were killed in Monday's bombing and 176
were injured.
Republican
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said 'the FBI or the system
dropped the ball' on the elder Tsarnaev. Graham told CNN that U.S. laws
do not allow the FBI to follow up enough even if it does spot danger.
Democratic
Senator Charles Schumer of New York told CNN 'there's certainly a lot
of questions' about the FBI's handling of the case.
One
U.S. counterterrorism official urged perspective. 'If we thoroughly
investigated every one of these terrorism tips we get, we'd never get
anything done,' he said.
Captured: The FBI wanted poster released last night was updated to show that Dzhokhar was in custody
A senior U.S. law enforcement source
said that the number of tips received from Russian intelligence to the
FBI each year is 'not that many.'
But
nationally, he said, the FBI receives at least 100 terrorism tips a day
- from the public, local and state law enforcement, other federal
agencies and the intelligence community.
House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent,
defended the agency. The Michigan Republican said the FBI had performed a
'very thorough' review of the older brother in 2011, but then it failed
to receive further cooperation from Russia.
'That case was closed prior to his travel, so I don't think we missed anything,' Rogers said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.'
'At
some point they (the FBI) asked, is there more clarifying information,
and never received that clarifying information, and at some point they
have nothing. You can't ask them to do something with nothing,' Rogers
said.
But McCaul and King said the handling of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's case looked like it was part of a pattern.
Open investigation: Law enforcement evidence
technicians continue to investigate the scene of the Boston Marathon
bombings on Saturday
The
26-year-old 'appears to be the fifth person since September 11, 2001,
to participate in terror attacks despite being under investigation by
the FBI,' the pair said in a joint letter.
They
named the others as Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric and leader of
al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen who was killed in a U.S. drone strike;
David Headley, an American who admitted scouting targets for a 2008
Islamic militant raid on Mumbai; Carlos Bledsoe, who killed an Army
private outside a military recruiting office in Arkansas in 2009; and
Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in
2009.
In addition, Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down a U.S. jetliner over
Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, had been identified to the CIA as a
potential terrorist, the letter said, adding the cases 'raise the most
serious questions about the efficacy of federal counterterrorism
efforts.'
The McCaul-King
letter asked for all information the U.S. government had on Tamerlan
Tsarnaev before April 15. It was also addressed to Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano.
http://tinyurl.com/cubveuf
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