‘Not Acting Alone’: 1000-Man Strong FBI Team Hunting Down Large Islamic ‘Sleeper Cell’ Linked To Boston Bombers

By Christopher Bucktin and Andy Lines, Mirror News – “The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers.

Police believe Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack.

More than 1,000 FBI operatives were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston in the hours before Dzhokhar’s dramatic capture after a bloody shootout on Friday.

A source close to the investigation said: ‘We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.

‘They were too advanced. Someone gave the brothers the skills and it is now our job to find out just who they were. Agents think the sleeper cell has up to a dozen members and has been waiting several years for their day to come.’ …

Neighbours of the family said older brother Tamerlan had recently become obsessed with Islam. He mysteriously left the US in January last year to spend six months in Russia. Yesterday senior FBI counter-terrorism official Kevin Brock said: ‘It’s a key thread for investigators.’

It also emerged the Bureau interviewed Tamerlan two years ago, at the request of the Russian government, but could not establish that he had ties to terrorist radicals.

This was despite his worrying Russian-language YouTube page featuring links to extremist Islamic sites and others since taken down by YouTube.

One link showed an hour-long speech by an Islamic teacher called Shaykh Feiz Mohammed, while other videos are labled ‘Terrorists’ and ‘Islam’.

The radical cleric, with links to extremist British Muslims, encouraged his followers to become martyrs for Islam. He said: ‘Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid.'” Read more.

Flashback: Islamist Sleeper Cells Are In The USA And Canada – “There is every reason to suspect that we will endure suicide missions by Islamist sleeper cells. They are already in place. They are waiting for the right time. I know this from experience. I have worked over 15 years as a U.S. Federal Agent, a U.S. State Department Arabic linguist, and the first civilian Federal Agent deployed into Iraq at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003… Upon returning from Iraq I left Federal Service to pursue a career educating U.S. law enforcement in the U.S. I wrote a book titled ‘Arabic for law enforcement and military’. During my lectures to local, county, and state law enforcement officers it was revealed the true first line defenders in the U.S. are not trained nor prepared to combat terrorism in the U.S.” Read more.