Boston Bomber Could Have Been Deported After 2009 Arrest

Updated 4 p.m. Friday related to arrest versus conviction issue: One of the Chechen terrorists who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings could have been deported years ago after a criminal arrest and/or conviction and the other was granted American citizenship on the 11th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence arrest and conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev but evidently didn’t feel he represented a big enough threat.

Other reporting confirms Tsarnaev’s arrest for domestic violence but we’re seeking confirmation of a conviction. Nevertheless he would have been subject to removal for the arrest itself.

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Adding insult to injury, the other bomber, little brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was rewarded with American Citizenship on September 11, 2012 in Boston, according to JW’s source. The 19-year-old, who is still on the run, was granted asylum in Arlington Virginia on September 27, 2002, JW’s source reveals.

Years before these Chechen terrorists carried out the Boston Marathon bombings Judicial Watch uncovered critical intelligence documentsdetailing al Qaeda’s activities in Chechnya, including the creation of a 1995 camp—ordered by Osama bin Laden—to train “international terrorists” to carry out plots against Americans and westerners.

The goal, according to the once-classified documents obtained by JW in 2011, was to “establish a worldwide Islamic state capable of directly challenging the U.S., China, Russia, and what it views as Judeo-Christian and Confucian domination.” Further, radical Islamic regimes were to be established and supported everywhere possible, from “sea to sea,” including Chechnya. “Terrorist activities are to be conducted against Americans and westerners…” according to the report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

In other words, it was only a matter of time before terrorists from the predominantly radical Islamic republic carried out an attack on U.S. soil. Chechnya declared independence from Russia in 1991 and Chechen militants are quite the savvy terrorists because they’ve successfully targeted Moscow with bombings and hostage plots for more than two decades.

In 2004 Chechen Islamic militants attacked a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia and they murdered 380 children, parents, teachers and visitors after holding more than 1,000 captive for three days. Judicial Watch also obtained intelligence documents from the government detailing that terrorist attack. Jointly released by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the October 12, 2004, report analyzes the Beslan terrorist attack with a view toward gleaning lessons for potential attacks on schools in the United States.

There’s no telling how many of these Chechen terrorists have infiltrated the United States or how many opportunities the government has missed to protect the country by deporting them. Osama bin Laden specifically chose Chechnya as a terrorist training camp because it’s an “area unreachable by strikes from the west,” according to the intelligence report obtained by JW years ago.