Feed: World Yahoo UK
Posted on: Monday, April 29, 2013 18:32
Author: World Yahoo UK
Subject: Boston Suspects' Parents Delay US Trip
The parents of the suspected Boston bombers are putting off a potential trip to the US, as they continue to plead their sons' innocence. Amid intense scrutiny, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and ex-husband Anzor Tsarnaev say they have postponed the idea of travelling to Massachusetts to reclaim their elder son's body or try to visit their younger son in jail. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a gunfight with police, while his brother, Dzhokhar, was wounded and captured just days after the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three people and injured hundreds more. Their father has determined he is too ill to travel to the US. Meanwhile their mother is wanted by US authorities on a 2012 shoplifting charge, though it is unclear whether that was a deterrent. "It's all lies and hypocrisy," Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told The Associated Press at her home in Dagestan over the weekend. "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 intentions, especially any linked to terrorism." But she continues to draw increased attention from investigators. Federal officials now say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, US officials said. When she arrived in the US in 2002, her appearance and behaviour were very different to today. Since then friends have noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims. Anzor Tsarnaev's brother, Ruslan Tsarni, has said he believed his former sister-in-law had a "big-time influence" on her older son's growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school. Mrs Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery and that she is just someone who found a deeper spirituality. It is unclear whether religious differences fuelled tension in the ethnic-Chechen family. The couple divorced in 2011. About the same time, came the brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia's security service. The recorded telephone conversations are significant, experts say. Had they been revealed earlier, there might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the family. One former US attorney general believes the alleged bombers likely had help in the attack. "I don't believe they could have done what they did without technical assistance building the bomb and without ... spiritual encouragement," Michael Mukasey, who served under George W Bush, told Fox News. He added that the idea the bombers only followed instructions from the internet "doesn't do it" for him. |
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