Bombers’ mother told older son to go to ‘Palestine’
Phone call between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, was intercepted by the Russian security service
The mother of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers spoke with her older son about going to “Palestine.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, in a telephone conversation from Russia with her older son Tamerlan, suggested that he go to Palestine during a discussion about jihad, the Associated Press reported. The Russian security service intercepted the phone conversation, according to the news service.
Mother and son reportedly discussed the idea of Tamerlan going to the Palestinian territories, but he apparently said he didn’t speak the language there.
Russian officials told the FBI in early 2011 that they believed Tamerlan, 26, and his mother were religious extremists. Following what the AP called a “limited inquiry,” the FBI closed the case in June 2011.
Tamerlan traveled to Russia in 2011, spending six months there.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has denied that she and her sons, Tamerlan and Dzhohkar Tsarnaev, 19, were involved in Islamic terrorism, saying her sons are being framed by United States security officials.
Police say the brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia who had lived in the US for about a decade, carried out the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, which killed three people and wounded more than 260. The brothers later killed a university police officer at MIT.
Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police and Dzhohkar was apprehended by police. He was questioned for two days before he got a lawyer and refused to continue providing information.
Investigators and lawmakers briefed by the FBI have said the Tsarnaev brothers — ethnic Chechens from Russia who had lived in the US for about a decade — were motivated by anger over the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months ago.
Dzhohkar was transferred to a prison medical facility on Friday from Boston’s Beth Israel hospital.
The hospital’s Israeli-trained CEO Kevin Tabb told The Times of Israel in an extensive interview that the hospital had provided treatment for him but that he no longer needed Beth Israel’s level of medical care, and that the hospital was “relieved” he had gone.
