Boston Bombing Inquiry Looks Closely at Russia Trip
By ELLEN BARRY
MAKHACHKALA, Russia - During a six-month visit to his Russian homeland last
year, the parents of the Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev said, he
spent his time reading novels and reconnecting with family, not venturing
into the shadowy world of the region's militants.
But now, investigators are looking into a range of suspected contacts Mr.
Tsarnaev might have made in Dagestan, from days he might have spent in a
fundamentalist Salafi mosque in Makhachkala, the capital, to time spent
outside the city with a relative who is a prominent Islamist leader recently
taken into custody by Russian authorities.
The emerging details of his time here have not fundamentally altered a
prevailing view among American and Russian investigators that he was
radicalized before his visit. However, there have been reports that he
sought out contact with Islamist extremists, and was flagged as a potential
recruit for the region's Islamic insurgency.
It remains unclear to what degree his months in Russia, which were
punctuated by volleys of punishing attacks between the police and
insurgents, might have changed his plans. But an official here, who said he
did not have enough information to confirm or deny reports of Mr. Tsarnaev's
contacts, said he had concluded that Mr. Tsarnaev intended to link up with
militant Islamists - but left frustrated, having failed.
"My presumed theory is that he evidently came here, he was looking for
contacts, but he did not find serious contacts, and if he did, they didn't
trust him," said Habib Magomedov, a member of Dagestan's antiterrorism
commission.
Mr. Tsarnaev, 26, died after a shootout with the police four days after the
Boston Marathon bombings on April 15. His brother, Dzhokhar, 19, also
suspected in the bombings, remains in a prison medical facility in
Massachusetts.
Investigators in Russia are also looking into Tamerlan Tsarnaev's
interactions online, and exploring whether he and a Canadian-born militant,
William Plotnikov, might have been part of a larger group of diaspora
Russian speakers who mobilized online, under the auspices of an organization
based in Europe, a law enforcement official said.
Unearthing what investigators have learned became more difficult two weeks
ago when President Vladimir V. Putin told reporters that, "to our great
regret," Russian security services did not have operative information on the
Tsarnaev brothers that they could have shared with American officials. The
police in Dagestan have said Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not under surveillance.
Since then an official from the Anti-Extremism Center, a federal agency
under Russia's Interior Ministry, confirmed for The Associated Press that
operatives had filmed Mr. Tsarnaev during visits to the Makhachkala mosque,
whose worshipers adhere to a more radical strain of Islam, and scrambled to
locate him when he disappeared from sight after Mr. Plotnikov was killed in
a counterterrorism raid. An official from the same unit told the newspaper
Novaya Gazeta that Mr. Tsarnaev had been spotted repeatedly with a suspected
militant, Mahmoud Mansur Nidal, who was killed shortly thereafter in a
counterterrorism raid.
What is certain, however, is that investigators are looking into the time
Mr. Tsarnaev spent with a distant cousin, Magomed Kartashov, founder of a
group called Union of the Just, a religious organization that promoted civic
action, not violence. Mr. Kartashov, whose relationship with Mr. Tsarnaev
was first reported in Time magazine, was detained 12 days ago by the police
after taking part in a wedding procession that flew Islamic flags.
(At a checkpoint, police officers stopped the procession and demanded that
the flags be removed; Mr. Kartashov protested, and is now facing charges of
resisting the police.)
Agents from Russia's Federal Security Service visited Mr. Kartashov last
Sunday in a detention center to question him about his relationship with Mr.
Tsarnaev, focusing on whether the two had shared "extremist" beliefs, said
Mr. Kartashov's lawyer, Patimat Abdullayeva.
Ms. Abdullayeva said that her client had discussed religious matters with
Mr. Tsarnaev, but had been a moderating influence. "Magomed is a preacher,
he has nothing to do with extremism," she said.
As head of the Union of the Just, Mr. Kartashov has led demonstrations
protesting police counterterrorism tactics, which are often brutal here, and
calling for the establishment of Islamic law, or Shariah, in the region. At
a rally in February, he aligned himself with antigovernment forces in Syria,
saying, "We do not want secularism, we do not want democracy, we want the
law of Allah," according to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
The time Mr. Tsarnaev spent with Mr. Kartashov may offer the first firm
clues to his thinking during that period. Five men who spent time with both
of them told Time that the Mr. Tsarnaev was apparently interested in
radicalism well before he came to Russia, and that they tried to dissuade
him from supporting local militant groups. Mr. Kartashov's group is mainly
known for protests, including one focusing on the United States late last
year, after the release of the film "Innocence of Muslims," that culminated
in the burning of an American flag.
Shakrizat Suleimanova, Mr. Tsarnaev's aunt, said the men were third cousins,
remembered each other from their childhood and regularly spent time together
last summer. She added that Mr. Kartashov was "no kind of extremist, and
spoke against any kind of killing."
Meeting with Salafi groups would not in itself signify extremist views, and
in recent years Dagestani authorities have allowed a gradual expansion of
Salafi organizations, like schools, Shariah law groups, even a Salafi soccer
club. The authorities regularly scrutinize such organizations, however, in
their attempt to identify militants.
Varvara Pakhomenko, who covers the North Caucasus for the International
Crisis Group, said pressure on Islamic groups had been increasing, perhaps
as "a new stage in the fight against the underground." She described the
underground as intricately structured and decentralized, made up of small
bands that are often aware of little beyond what is happening in nearby
villages.
"If you want to find the door to the underground, it can be found," she
said. "Part of the movement is in the mountains, in camps, and there is also
an urban component. They visit their wives in Makhachkala, and in fact are
often caught there in shootouts."
But Mr. Magomedov, the member of Dagestan's antiterrorism commission, said
Mr. Tsarnaev might have failed to find that door because the fighters
themselves did not trust him. "They refused," he said.
Andrew Roth contributed reporting.
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