https://www.frontpagemag.com/tourist-terror-turns-ten/
April 15 will mark ten years since Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev targeted the Boston Marathon with explosive devices that killed Lingzi Lu, 23, Krystle Campbell, 29, and Martin Richard, only eight years old. The powerful pressure-cooker bombs also wounded more than 250 at the crowded annual event.
Police killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a shootout and captured younger brother Dzhokhar. His death sentence was overturned in 2020 and reinstated in 2022. This January, Tsarnaev made another bid to have his death sentence overturned, and Dzhokhar, 29, has to like his chances. That invites a review of how the bombers got to Boston in the first place.
In April of 2002, Anzor Tsarnaev arrived in the USA on a tourist visa with sons Tamerlan, 15, and Dzhokhar, only eight at the time. The family gained asylum and Dzhokhar became a U.S. citizen on September 11, 2012, despite security concerns. In 2011, the Russian government warned the FBI that the Tsarnaevs had ties to Chechen terrorists.
More than a year before the bombing, Tamerlan traveled back and forth from Dagestan for terror training. He should have been stopped at JFK airport but his name had been misspelled in a security database. The FBI did conduct an investigation of Tamerlan but closed the probe in June of 2011, after finding “no links to terrorism.” As Bostonians and people across the country may recall, the FBI committed a similar lapse in 2009.
The bureau knew that U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan was communicating with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing Americans. The FBI dropped the probe and on November 5, 2009, Hasan murdered 13 Americans and wounded more than 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas, yelling “Allahu akbar” as he fired. Pvt. Francheska Velez was pregnant, so the death count should be 14. Despite the carnage, the lessons of Fort Hood went unlearned.