Stew Milne/AP – Katherine Russell, wife of Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, leaves the law office of DeLuca and Weizenbaum in Providence, R.I., on April 29.
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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.
Russell’s attorney did not return phone calls for a comment. The attorney, Amato DeLuca, has previously said his client played no role in the plot and was shocked to learn of the involvement of her husband and brother-in-law.
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.
FBI spokesman Jason J. Pack said that the Dartmouth search by law enforcement and explosive-sniffing dogs is part of the continuing investigation into the bombings.
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.
**UPDATE**
CBS News has learned the DNA and fingerprints on bomb fragments found at the Boston bombing scene do not match those of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow, Katherine Russell.
But Russell is still under scrutiny due to her proximity to the suspected Boston bomber, according to CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, a former assistant FBI director.
“I think they’re very skeptical about (her story),” Miller said on “CBS This Morning.” “But again, ‘skeptical’ isn’t proof and that’s why they’re trying to work through that and I think that’s why her lawyers are slowing that down.”
CBS News has also learned later Friday afternoon that Russell was seen leaving in a minivan from her parents’ home in Rhode Island and that that FBI agents were parked outside of the home monitoring her movements.
“They will likely keep surveillance logs of where she goes and what she does,” said Miller, “but this is not covert surveillance as you might conduct during an investigation. This is what is jokingly referred to a “bumper-lock” surveillance. The subject knows you are there. The real purpose of this is to be able to keep tabs on Russell until they determine whether or not she is a suspect in the bombing conspiracy or not. If information turned up implicating her, and they went to find her and she was gone, that would be a bad thing. So they are covering their flank by watching her until they have a clear determination if she had any role or knowledge in her husbands’ plot.”
Investigators are looking at a phone call between Russell and Tamerlan Tsarnaev just hours after the FBI released a picture of him. Miller said the “nature of that call” is of particular interest.
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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.
English: The Seal of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. For more information, see here. Español: El escudo del Buró Federal de Investigaciones (FBI). Para obtener más información, véase aquí (Inglés). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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.”
The pressure-cooker bombs use different triggers and power sources than the Inspire designs, but they match the magazine instructions in the use of several components, including gunpowder from fireworks, according to the TEDAC analysis.
source: CBS This Morning/Washington Post
