Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was added to a terrorism database with her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev about 18 months before the attack.
About 18 months before the Boston Marathon bombings, the CIA added the mother of the two suspects to a terrorism database after Russian authorities raised concerns that she and her oldest son were religious militants, the Associated Press reported.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was added to the the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center's TIDE watch list in fall 2011 at the same time as her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died April 19 in a shootout with police outside Boston, two anonymous government officials told AP. He subsequently traveled to Russia in January 2012 and returned in July.
The CIA request to add Tsarnaeva and her oldest son to the database, which includes more than 500,000 names, came roughly six months after the FBI had investigated them, at the request of Russia, and found no links to terrorism. Being on the list does not mean that U.S. authorities have proof that someone is a terrorist or possibly linked to terrorism, nor is someone subjected to surveillance or travel restrictions.
"It's all lies and hypocrisy," Tsarnaeva told the AP from the Russian republic of Dagestan... "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."
Records show Tsarnaeva has an open criminal case over her June 2012 arrest for allegedly shoplifting $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a Lord & Taylor store in Natick, near Boston.
FBI and Russian security agents questions the Tsarnaevs
Friday, she told CNN that she and her husband, Anzor, had left their home in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, for another part of Russia, but she did not indicate where. The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens from the Caucasus of southern Russia. They immigrated from Kyrgyzstan to the Boston area over the past 11 years, but the parents returned to Dagestan last year.
Tsarnaeva said her husband was delaying his trip to the United States indefinitely. He has said he would return to the states to seek "justice and the truth" in the bombing investigation, bury one son and visit the other, who has been charged with the two Patriots' Day blasts that killed three and wounded 264.
She said she has not decided whether to return to the United States, even though her lawyers assured her she would not be arrested for the outstanding theft charges.
At a news conference Thursday, the parents reiterated their belief that their sons are innocent and not connected to Islamic extremists. They also said they believe that police killed Tamerlan after he was captured alive.
Anzor Tsarnaev told reporters he would travel to the United States Thursday, but later his wife called an ambulance for him and said his departure would be delayed indefinitely. He has suffered from an unspecified illness.
The Tsarnaevas' youngest son, 19-year-old Dzhokhar, faces a possible death sentence if convicted of the bombings.
He suffered a serious neck wound and was captured hours after his 26-year-old brother was killed. The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that he was transferred overnight from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston to at a federal prison medical facility at Fort Devens, Mass.
