NYT: Russia Withheld Information on Boston Bomber

Russia withheld critical information from the FBI on one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects’ ties to radical Islam two years before the attacks that killed three Americans and injured more than 260 others — and those disclosures most likely would have triggered more investigation by authorities, The New York Times reports.

Russian officials told the FBI in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police after the attacks, “was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer,” the Times says, citing a new report on how U.S. agencies could have stopped the bombings.

Moscow also told the agency that Tsarnaev “had changed drastically” as he met up with “unspecified underground groups,” during travels to the Dagestan region of Russia, according to the report.

But Moscow refused to provide any further information to the FBI despite the agency making “several” requests for more data, the Times reports.

“They found that the Russians did not provide all the information that they had on him back then, and based on everything that was available, the FBI did all that it could,” a top U.S. official briefed on the report told the Times.

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