They built the bomb largely
according to the specifications in the al-Qaeda magazine. "Investigators
sharpen focus on Boston bombing suspect’s widow," by Sari Horwitz for
the
Washington Post, May 3 (thanks to Axel):
Federal law enforcement officials are sharpening their focus
on the widow of the dead suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings after
finding al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine and other radical Islamist material
on her computer, according to law enforcement officials.
The probe of the computer belonging to Katherine Russell, 24, the
widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is part of the effort by investigators to
determine whether Russell knew anything about the April 15 bombing plot
or helped the Tsarnaev brothers hide from authorities, according to the
officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the
ongoing investigation.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the surviving suspect, has told investigators
that he and his brother learned to build the pressure-cooker bombs from
English-language Inspire magazine, and that they were partly influenced
by the online sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda propagandist who
was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
According to officials, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also told investigators
that he and his brother built the bombs in Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Cambridge
apartment, where the elder brother lived with Russell and their
daughter. Officials said that Russell called her husband when she saw
his photograph on television — following the FBI’s release of the
pictures of the suspects — but did not notify authorities.
One of the key questions for investigators is whether the radical
Islamist materials on Russell’s computer belonged to her or were
downloaded by her husband or someone else....
In another development, federal agents, state troopers and local law
enforcement officers scoured a wooded area near Dartmouth, Mass., where
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attended college. Investigators are looking for
possible evidence that might indicate the brothers tested explosives
there, according to a law enforcement official. Residents in the
vicinity had reported hearing loud noises coming from the woods on March
30....
On Monday, FBI special agents spent about 90 minutes inside the North
Kingstown, R.I., home of Russell’s parents. The agents left with bags
of material and a sample of Russell’s DNA.
Two law enforcement officials said that investigators found
fingerprints and female DNA on fragments of the pressure-cooker bombs
that exploded at the marathon. The DNA could have come from a woman who
helped the suspects make the bombs or from a person who handled the
materials at a store where the suspects bought them, said the officials.
The DNA may have also come from someone in the crowd at the marathon,
one of the officials said.
Law enforcement officials said several “persons of interest” in the
United States and Russia are being investigated in connection with the
brothers. One of the primary focuses remains the seven months that
Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent in strife-torn regions of southern Russia in
2012.
During 16 hours of questioning in the hospital by the FBI, the
younger Tsarnaev told agents that he and his brother initially
considered carrying out suicide bombings and executing their plot on the
Fourth of July at Boston’s large celebration along the Charles River,
two law enforcement officials said.
But Tsarnaev said that he and his brother decided to launch their
attack earlier because they were able to assemble the bombs in three or
four days, more quickly than they had expected, according to two law
enforcement officials.
Officials have expressed some skepticism about Tsarnaev’s account,
saying that the complexity of the bombs makes it unlikely that the
brothers could have completed assembling them as fast as he claimed.
According to a government document obtained by NBC News, a detailed
analysis of the bombs used at the Boston Marathon — and the pipe bombs
allegedly thrown at police from the Tsarnaevs’ car during a gunfight
four days later — show striking similarities to instructions from
Inspire magazine.
The report from the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center
(TEDAC) said that the design of the pressure cooker bombs and the pipe
bombs resembled the instructions provided in an article in the first
issue of Inspire headlined “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”...
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