FBI looks at contact overseas

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Sunday that the FBI is investigating in the United States and overseas to determine whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing received training that helped them carry out the attack.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with joining with his deceased older brother, Tamerlan, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The bombs were triggered by a remote detonator of the kind used in remote-control toys, U.S. officials have said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held in a small cell with a steel door at a federal medical detention center about 40 miles outside Boston, a federal official said Saturday.

Federal Medical Center Devens spokesman John Collauti said in a telephone interview that Tsarnaev is in secure housing where authorities can monitor him. His cell has a solid steel door with an observation window and a slot for passing food and medication.

Collauti wouldn’t discuss specific details related to Tsarnaev, but said that typically medical workers making rounds each shift monitor the inmates. He said guards also keep an eye on some cells with video cameras.

U.S. officials investigating the bombings have said that so far there is no evidence of a wider plot, including training, direction or funding for the attacks.

A criminal complaint outlining federal charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described him as holding a cell phone in his hand minutes before the first explosion.

The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents.

“I think given the level of sophistication of this device, the fact that the pressure cooker is a signature device that goes back to Pakistan, Afghanistan, leads me to believe - and the way they handled these devices and the tradecraft - … that there was a trainer and the question is where is that trainer or trainers,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, on Fox News Sunday.

“Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?” McCaul said. “In my conversations with the FBI, that’s the big question. They’ve cast a wide net both overseas and in the United States to find out where this person is. But I think the experts all agree that there is someone who did train these two individuals.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he thought it’s “probably true” that the attack was not linked to a major group. But, he told CNN’s State of the Union, there “may have been radicalizing influences” in the U.S. or abroad. “It does look like a lot of radicalization was self-radicalization online, but we don’t know the full answers yet.”

Homemade bombs built from pressure cookers have been a frequent weapon of militants in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.

Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen once published an online manual on how to make one.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was an ardent reader of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda, officials have said. He frequently looked at extremist sites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate.

In recent years, two would be U.S. attackers reported receiving bomb-making training from foreign groups but failed to set off the explosives.

A Nigerian man was given a mandatory life sentence for trying to blow up a packed jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb sewn into his underwear. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had tried to set off the bomb minutes before the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight landed.

In 2010, a Pakistani immigrant who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York’s Times Square also received a life sentence. Faisal Shazad said the Pakistan Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training.

The bomb was made of fireworks fertilizer, propane tanks and gasoline canisters. Explosives experts said the fertilizer wasn’t the right grade and the fireworks weren’t powerful enough to set off the intended chain reaction.

In Boston, hospitals say the number of patients being treated for injuries suffered in the marathon bombing continues to drop, nearly two weeks after the attack that killed three and hurt more than 260.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said Sunday morning that six patients with bombing injuries remain hospitalized, down from more than 20 immediately after the April 15 attack.

All six are in good or fair condition.

Nine victims remain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, down from 36 after the bombing. Seven are in good condition.

Massachusetts General Hospital continues to treat six bombing victims, with one in serious condition and the others in good or fair condition. The hospital has treated 31 bombing victims.

In other news, Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call.

In another conversation, the mother was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June 2011.

In the past week, Russian authorities turned over to the United States information it had on Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva.

In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn’t speak the language there, according to the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S.

In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus region of Russia who was under FBI investigation.

There was no information in the conversation that suggested a plot inside the United States, officials said.

Nobody was available to discuss the matter early Sunday at FSB offices in Moscow.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has denied that she or her sons were involved in terrorism. She has said she believed her sons have been framed by U.S. authorities.

But Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers and Zubeidat’s former brother-in law, said Saturday he believes the mother had a “big-time influence” as her older son increasingly embraced his Muslim faith and decided to quit boxing and school.

Family members have said Tamerlan was religiously apathetic until 2008 or 2009, when he met a conservative Muslim convert known only to the family as Misha. Misha, they said, steered Tamerlan toward a stricter version of Islam.

Two U.S. officials say investigators believe they have identified Misha. While it was not clear whether the FBI had spoken to him, the officials said they have not found a connection between Misha and the Boston attack or terrorism in general.

The father of the two Boston bombing suspects said Sunday that he has postponed a trip from Russia to the United States because of poor health.

“I am really sick,” said Anzor Tsarnaev, 46. He said his blood pressure had spiked to dangerous levels.

Tsarnaev said at a news conference Thursday that he planned to leave that day or the next for the U.S. with the hope of seeing his younger son, who is under arrest, and burying his elder son, who was killed. His family, however, indicated later Thursday that the trip could be pushed back because he was not feeling well.

Tsarnaev confirmed on Sunday that he is staying in Chechnya, a province in southern Russia, but did not specify whether he was hospitalized.

Tsarnaev’s family said last week that he intended to get to the U.S. by flying from Grozny, the Chechen capital, to Moscow. He and Tsarnaeva left Dagestan on Friday, but their whereabouts were unclear.

Information for this article was contributed by Eileen Sullivan, Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Michael Kunzelman and Arsen Mollayev of The Associated Press.