Saudi Arabian officials gave the United States a written warning about Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev months before the attack, a new report says.
Officials in the oil-rich kingdom sent a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security in 2012, detailing their concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and indicating he might have been planning an attack, the Daily Mail reports today.
“It was very specific” a Saudi official told the Mail.
He said the letter mentioned Tsarnaev’s name and warned that “something was going to happen in a major US city.”
The information arose through Saudi intelligence- gathering in Yemen, the paper said, although the specific source of that info was not revealed.
The Saudis were so concerned that they denied Tsarnaev a visa to visit the holy city of Mecca in 2011.
The report came to light as President Obama called for a review of the warning signs that appeared in the years before the April 15 attack took place, including an alarm sounded by Russia over Tsarnaev.
“We want to leave no stone unturned,” Obama said during a news conference.“Based on what I’ve seen so far, the FBI performed its duties. Department of Homeland Security did what it was supposed to be doing.”
The information from the Saudi government was also shared with Great Britain. It was unclear, however, whether DHS officials received the information.
One Homeland Security official confirmed to the Daily Mail that he had, in fact, heard of the letter, but another denied that DHS had received intelligence from Saudi Arabia.
The White House also denied that a Saudi warning existed.
“We and other relevant US government agencies have no record of such a letter being received,” a spokesperson for the president’s National Security Council told the Mail.
A GOP staffer said that it was possible that Homeland Security received the intel but never passed it on to the White House.
Meanwhile yesterday, Tsarnaev’s widow, Katherine Russell, 24, asked Massachusetts authorities for permission to claim his body, her lawyer said.
No decision on what will happen to the remains has yet been made.