Tel-Chai Nation

CBC/AP reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had conversed about jihad with his mother, as found by Russian authorities:

Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call.

In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June 2011.

Two years later, authorities say Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhohkar, detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260. Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout and Dzhohkar is under arrest.

While the Russian authorities might have to shoulder some blame here for not giving enough warning about how dangerous they were, even the FBI may be to blame for not taking the warnings seriously enough. If the brothers and their mother were extremists, that is reason enough to be concerned.

Now tragedy has occurred, and a horror that could've been prevented took place, all because political correctness could not be prevented.

Labels: anti-americanism, Asia, Europe, islam, jihad, Russia, terrorism, United States, war on terror