Zubeidat K. Tsarnaeva, the mother of Boston bombing suspects Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, suggested Friday that the FBI had been surveilling her older son for several years prior to Monday’s attack.
In an interview with Russia Today on Friday, Tsarnaeva said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev got involved in “religious politics” five years ago, and that the FBI had previously contacted her about her son’s activities.
“He was controlled by the FBI, like for three, five years,” she said. “They knew what my son was doing, they knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going [to], they used to come…and talk to me…they were telling me that he was really a serious leader and they were afraid of him.”
“How could this happen?…They were controlling every step of him, and they are telling today that this is a terrorist attack,” she added.
FBI did not answer an email inquiry by IransView.com regarding the allegedly the agency’s contact with the Boston bombing suspect. But the FBI National Press Office issued a statement on Friday about a 2011 request for information on Temrlan Tsarnaev from a “foreign government”. The statement didn’t specify the name of the foreign government but it confirmed 2011 contacts of the FBI with the Boston bombing suspect.
” The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.”
Tsarnaeva doubled down on her statements later in the interview, insisting that her sons were innocent, and had been “set up” by the FBI:
“FBI, they were scared of my oldest son, they always told me that he’s a leader…They are afraid of him because, you know, he is a leader, he talks about Islam a lot.”
“They were talking to my son, and they called me officially and they told me that my son is an excellent boy and they have no problem with him,” she asserted. “At the same time, they were telling me that…he is getting information on really extremists…sites, so they were very, very afraid of him. So that’s why I think that this is a setup.”
Tamerlan, 26, died Thursday night in a shootout with Boston Police. Tsarnaeva’s younger son, Dzhoker, 19, arrested on Friday.
