This morning on ABC’s This Week program, Martha Raddatz said that the Russian authorities had asked the FBI to investigate the older Tsarnaev brother, Tamerlan, in 2009 because they believed that he was in contact with Russian Islamist terrorist organizations. That was always a reasonable speculation based on what had been reported but that was the first time that I had heard a confirmation that the Russians had instigated that investigation.
….in fact, Obama has already thanked Putin on Friday for his unspecified help.
What some are asking is why this information, about the eldest brother’s earlier questioning by the feds, wasn’t put into a data base denoting people of suspected terrorist intent, which could then be readily accessed should there be some kind of terrorist incident in Boston (like what happened last Monday). They certainly do this for registered sex offenders.
Instead, one of their crucial leads came from Jeff Bauman, who ID’d one of the suspects from his hospital bed, after having his lower legs blown off.
That would have been my guess as well, but it would only have been a guess. I think this background from Joshua Frost a few years ago might be useful in sorting out potential claims:
“Since [2007], incidents of violence within Chechnya itself have leveled off — only to migrate east to Dagestan and west to Ingushetia and North Ossetia. The violence was pushed out of one Russian republic, making its neighbors worse off.”
http://registan.net/2010/08/19/migrating-violence-in-the-caucasus/
I read this earlier in reference to our own COIN problems in AfPac; here the point would be that one need not go to Chechnya to go to Chechnya.
I was surprised that we cooperate that closely with the Russians. (Wonder what the reaction would have been if it were known we were helping them?) I suspect a database already exists, but given that the Chechens have, to the best of my knowledge, never gone after anyone but the Russians, I am not sure this guy would have been considered much of a threat.
I actually find it encouraging that we are working with the Russians. Rather than continuing to think of them as the USSR, we should realize that they have interests that sometimes coincide with our won, and work together when possible.
Steve
He was reportedly denied citizenship because he was on a list, so he was in a database. There are probably a lot of people in those databases and it’s not always straightforward to pick out the right person without more specific information, like that provided by the victim. As we saw with the reddit “analysts,” determining persons of interest or suspects usually requires a lot of analysis utilizing many different sources of information.
“As we saw with the reddit “analysts,†determining persons of interest or suspects usually requires a lot of analysis utilizing many different sources of information.”
What? You mean you can’t just plugin ‘terrorist Boston’ and this guy’s name would automagically pop out as the perp? I’m disappointed.