Two leading experts on
the Russian republic of Dagestan suspect Moscow knows a lot more about one of
the accused Boston Marathon bombers than it is telling U.S. investigators.
Another warns unrest in the Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan, could
spill over into February’s winter Olympics in Sochi, less than a day’s drive
away on the Black Sea.
Two ethnic Chechen
residents of the Boston area–Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev–were accused of
last week’s marathon bombing. Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a shootout with
Boston police last Friday and Dzhokhar, 19, was captured later the same day.
Tamerlan spent half of
2012 in Dagestan, ostensibly to visit relatives. U.S. investigators are trying
to determine if the lengthy visit included contacts with Islamist factions and
extremists groups that have been a source of turmoil in the region for years.
In Boston, Tamerlan had
expressed sympathies with the ideologies of such groups.
‘Black
spot’ in the story
“Tamerlan’s trip to
Dagestan remains one of the major ‘black spots’ in the story of the Boston
bombers,” said Jean-Francois Ratelle, a professor at George Washington
University in Washington. Ratelle worked in Dagestan researching the
radicalization of Islamic youths in the Caucasus region.
Ratelle said Russia’s
FSB intelligence agency closely monitors Islamist groups in Dagestan.
“I grew a beard and was
spending time among young, the young radicals," he said. "That was enough
for being under constant surveillance, for being detained several times and
questioned."
Prior to Tamerlan’s
Dagestan trip, Russian intelligence contacted both the FBI and CIA inquiring
about Tsarnaev, warning that he might try “to join unspecified underground
groups” if he visited the Caucasus region. But, according to the FBI and CIA,
Moscow did not supply additional information despite repeated requests.
Ratelle said it was
“very interesting” that Russian intelligence did not follow up with a report on
Tamerlan’s Dagestan visit despite its earlier warning.
Russians
provide no details
Another Dagestan expert
troubled by Moscow’s silence is Walter Richmond, professor of Russian studies
at Occidental College in California.
“Did Tamerlan Tsarnaev
travel to Russia to get to the terrorist training camps?” Richmond said. “We
don’t have an answer since the Russian government agency did not provide us
with details of his six month stay in Dagestan. [It's] very strange, the fact
that a young man who was on the watch list of the Russian security services as
a suspect in terrorist activities was allowed to enter the country’s most
troubled region, stay and leave with no reported encounter with any of the
government agencies.”
Ratelle said he would
not be at all surprised if Tamerlan came away from last year’s visit to
Dagestan as a much more “radicalized” Islamist.
“I have witnessed many
of my young acquaintances in Makhachkala [the regional capital] becoming
radicalized during my stay in Dagestan,” he said. “If a young man like Tamerlan
Tsarnaev wishes to become a ‘pure Muslim,’ Dagestan is the right access point
to get closer to that ideology.”
And Glen E. Howard,
president of the Jamestown Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think
tank, believes the turmoil in the Caucasus region could spell trouble for the
winter Olympics, scheduled in Sochi, just across the Caucasus Mountains from
Dagestan.
“The big question we in
the West, and especially in the U.S., should be asking ourselves today is about
the risks of dispatching thousands of our athletes and spectators to the
Olympics in Sochi,” Howard said.
Sources :
http://www.voanews.com/content/tamerlan-tsarnaev-in-dagestan/1649110.html
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