By ELLEN BARRY
Published: May 8, 2013
17 Comments
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.
Dagestani branch of the Russian Federal Security Service, via Reuters
The Canadian-born militant William Plotnikov, right, who died alongside Islamist insurgents last July in Dagestan.
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.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 9, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated in one instance the surname of the Boston bombing suspect whose 2012 visit to Russia is under investigation. He is Tamerlan Tsarnaev, not Tsarnae.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 9, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Bomb Inquiry Looks Closely At Russia Trip.
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