Russian paper tries to tie Tsarnaevs to Georgia and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Izvestia, one of Russia's largest broadsheets, has apparently joined the "false flag" conspiracy crowd with a very weird article (translated here) that suggests a link between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and U.S. intelligence agencies through a very long list of dubious connections.
The article cites secret documents from Georgia's Ministry of Internal Affairs claiming that when Tsarnaev visited the Caucasus in 2012, he took classes organized by the Jamestown Foundation -- a U.S. think tank -- and the "Fund for Caucasus," a Georgian group whose "main purpose is to recruit young people and intellectuals of the North Caucasus to enhance instability and extremism in the southern regions of Russia. " According to the article, the seminars were engaged in "recruiting residents of the North Caucasus to work in the interests of the United States and Georgia" and "preparing acts of terrorism. " Izvestia also makes a big deal out of the fact that the Jamestown Foundation's board includes former U.S. Did the FBI Bungle the Tsarnaev Case? - By David Gomez. The FBI is taking a lot of heat in the press and from Congress for how it handled its 2011 investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, which was opened after Russian officials fingered him as an extremist.
Critics have charged that the bureau closed its inquiry without continuing surveillance after it failed to find any connection to terrorism. And, on Wednesday, Senator Richard Burr went a step further, alleging that the bureau had ignored follow-on requests from Russian officials. The suggestion, obviously, is that the bureau brushed aside clear warnings that could have prevented the Boston Marathon bombing. But it didn't. Individuals familiar with the FBI investigation have confirmed to me that Russia made no official requests to the bureau beyond its original request. What's more, it is clear that the majority of the FBI's critics simply don't understand how terrorism investigations work. The DIOG created a new category of investigation called an assessment.
STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images. David Remnick: The Brothers Tsarnaev. In the midst of the Second World War, Joseph Stalin, seized by one of his historic fits of paranoia and cruelty, declared the Chechen people disloyal to the U.S.S.R. and banished them from their homeland in the northern Caucasus to Central Asia and the Siberian wastes.
Tens of thousands of Chechens, along with members of other small ethnic groups from the Caucasus and the Crimean Peninsula, died in the mass deportation or soon after—some from cold, some from starvation. The Tsarnaev family eventually settled in a town called Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan, not far from the capital, Bishkek. Most who survived the next thirteen years in exile were permitted to return home, in the late fifties, under Nikita Khrushchev, and they reëstablished a sense of place as well as identity. Some remained expatriates. Chechens speak Russian with a thick accent; more often they speak their own language, Noxchiin Mott.
Anzor’s elder son, Tamerlan, appeared never to connect fully with American life. ‘Misha’ Speaks: An Interview with the Alleged Boston Bomber’s ‘Svengali’ by Christian Caryl. As the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings continues, one of the more clouded aspects is the tale of “Misha,” a mysterious US-based Islamist who has been accused by members of the Tsarnaev family of radicalizing Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two alleged bombers. “It started in 2009. And it started right there, in Cambridge,” Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told CNN after the attacks. “This person just took his brain. He just brainwashed him completely.” These accusations set off a frenzied search for what some reports have called an Islamic Svengali, and over the past few days, the FBI has said it has located and has been talking to “Misha,” though his identity has remained unknown.
Today I was able to meet “Misha,” whose real name is Mikhail Allakhverdov. A thirty-nine-year-old man of Armenian-Ukrainian descent, Allakhverdov is of medium height and has a thin, reddish-blond beard. I’ve been cooperating entirely with the FBI.