The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Sunday that the FBI is investigating in the United States and overseas to determine whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing received training that helped them carry out the attack.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with joining with his older brother, Tamerlan, who’s now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The bombs were triggered by a remote detonator of the kind used in remote-control toys, US officials have said.
US officials investigating the bombings have told The Associated Press that so far there is no evidence to date of a wider plot, including training, direction or funding for the attacks.
A criminal complaint outlining federal charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described him as holding a cellphone in his hand minutes before the first explosion.
The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents.
“I think given the level of sophistication of this device, the fact that the pressure cooker is a signature device that goes back to Pakistan, Afghanistan, leads me to believe — and the way they handled these devices and the tradecraft — … that there was a trainer and the question is where is that trainer or trainers,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?” McCaul said. “In my conversations with the FBI, that’s the big question. They’ve casted a wide net both overseas and in the United States to find out where this person is. But I think the experts all agree that there is someone who did train these two individuals.”
McCaul also said he thinks the suspects’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, played “a very strong role” in her Muslim sons’ radicalization process and that if she were to return to the United States from Russia, she’d be held for questioning.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he thought it’s “probably true” that the attack was not linked to a major group. But, he told CNN’s “State of the Union,” that there “may have been radicalizing influences” in the U.S. or abroad. “It does look like a lot of radicalization was self-radicalization online, but we don’t know the full answers yet.”
On ABC’s “This Week,” moderator George Stephanopoulos raised the question to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee about FBI suspicions that the brothers had help in getting the bombs together.
“Absolutely, and not only that, but in the self-radicalization process, you still need outside affirmation,” responded Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.
“We still have persons of interest that we’re working to find and identify and have conversations with,” he added.
At this point in the investigation, however, Sen. Claire McCaskill said there was no evidence that the brothers “were part of a larger organization, that they were, in fact, part of some kind of terror cell or any kind of direction.”
The Missouri Democrat, who’s on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “it appears, at this point, based on the evidence, that it’s the two of them.”
Homemade bombs built from pressure cookers have been a frequent weapon of militants in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen once published an online manual on how to make one.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was an ardent reader of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda, officials have said. He frequently looked at extremist sites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate.
Meanwhile, the suspects’ father has abandoned plans to travel to the United States to bury one son and help in the defense of the other, he told Reuters on Sunday in an interview in southern Russia.
Anzor Tsarnaev said he believed he would not be allowed to see his surviving son Dzohkhar, who was captured and has been charged in connection with the April 15 bomb blasts that killed three people and wounded 264.
“I am not going back to the United States. For now I am here. I am ill,” Tsarnaev said. He agreed to the face-to-face interview on condition that his location in the North Caucasus, a string of mainly Muslim provinces in southern Russia, not be disclosed.
“Unfortunately I can’t help my child in any way. I am in touch with Dzhokhar’s and my own lawyers. They told me they would let me know (what to do),” he said.
Tsarnaev had said in the North Caucasus province of Dagestan on Thursday that he planned to travel to the United States to see Dzkhokhar and bury his elder son, Tamerlan, who was shot dead by police in a firefight four days after the bombings.
Tsarnaev’s comments come a day after it was revealed that the suspects’ mother had talked about jihad with one of them.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held in a small cell with a steel door at a federal medical detention center about 40 miles outside the city, a federal official said Saturday.
Federal Medical Center Devens spokesman John Collauti described the conditions under which the 19-year-old suspect was being held in the Ayer facility after being moved there from a hospital Friday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was injured during a police chase Thursday in which his brother, also a suspect in the bombing, was fatally wounded.
Collauti said in a telephone interview that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in secure housing where authorities can monitor him. His cell has a solid steel door with an observation window and a slot for passing food and medication.
Collauti wouldn’t discuss specific details related to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but said that typically medical workers making rounds each shift monitor the inmates. He said guards also keep an eye on some cells with video cameras.
Also, inmates in the more restrictive section do not have access to TVs or radios, but can read books and other materials, he said.
“Really this type of facility is fully capable of handling him and it’s not that much of an inconvenience because it’s more or less business as usual,” Collauti said.
Also, a Boston hospital says the number of patients it is treating for injuries sustained in the marathon bombing continues to drop, 13 days after the attack that killed three and injured more than 260.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center says that by Sunday morning, it had six patients with injuries from the bombing, down from more than 20 in the days immediately following the April 15 attack.
Hospital spokesman Jerry Berger says all six patients are in good or fair condition.
Nine victims are still at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, down from 36 after the bombing. Seven are in good condition.
In all, 26 hospitals have treated people with injuries from the bombing.
With AP, Reuters and Fox News
