Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaeva and his mother Zubeidat were added to a federal watch list long before the explosions, U.S. government officials revealed Thursday.
According to the Associated Press, U.S. intelligence agencies added Mrs. Tsarnaev to a classified terrorism database 18 months before the attacks in Boston killed 3 people and wounded 246 others.
In late 2011, Russian officials informed the CIA that Zubeidat and her son Tamerlan were religious militants who were planning to travel to Russia. Afterward, both Mrs. Tsarnaev and Tamerlan were investigated by the FBI. However, the FBI concluded they were not involved with terrorism.
Zubeidat maintains that her sons are being framed and that the Boston Marathon attacks are part of "a really big play" which used paint on sidewalks to imitate blood.
"It's all lies and hypocrisy," Tsarnaev said from Dagestan. "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."
While Tamerlan was killed on April 19 in a shootout with police, Tsarnaev's younger son, Dzhokhar, has confessed to executing the bombings and that he was recruited by Tamerlan to participate only a week or two before the attacks. Nonetheless, his mother insists that they are both innocent.
"You know what I think? I think now they will try to make my Dzhokhar guilty because they took away his voice, his ability to talk to the world... They did not want the truth to come out," Tsarnaev told CNN on Wednesday.
Names listed in the database do not mean the U.S. government has evidence that links someone to terrorism, nor does it guarantee that those individuals are subjected to surveillance, security screening or travel restrictions.
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