Speaking from Times Square on April 28, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the FBI “may have messed up” in the way they handled their investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 for possible ties to extremist groups.
“They may have messed up, because Russia did call and say they have doubts about Tsarnaev. The FBI interviewed him, but then he went to Russia,” Schumer explained. “And when he came back, he immediately started placing on his website very inflammatory items about jihad.”
Schumer said the FBI was right to have interviewed Tsarnaev, but their mistake lies in the fact that they did not interview him again once he came back from Russia. “He goes back to his homeland and immediately on coming back puts all this inflammatory stuff on his website,” Schumer said. “It seems pretty logical that the FBI should have interviewed him again.”
The New York senator said Tsarnaev was on a watchlist, he went to Russia, and Russia “alerted us that he might be dangerous and… seems to have taken a radical turn,” yet there was no follow-up interview when he returned to the U.S. Schumer says he wants to know why.
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