Steve Neavling

A man accused of radicalizing the older brother in the Boston Marathon bombings denied any wrongdoing and said he would never condone a terrorist attack, the Washington Times reports.

Mikhail Allakhverdov, 39, a convert to Islam, denied allegations leveled by relatives of Tamerian Tsarnaev.

“I wasn’t his teacher. If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this,” Allakhverdov said.

Allakhverdov said he has been “cooperating entirely” with the investigation.

“I gave them my computer and my phone and everything,” he said, according to the review, “I wanted to show I haven’t done anything. And they said they are about to return them to me.”

The suspect, who was killed in a shootout, was added to two terrorism watch lists last year after Russia requested the FBI investigate Tsarnaev.

Turns out, Russia provided the wrong name and date of birth to the CIA, ABC News reported.

Editorial Board

Law Enforcement agencies can’t be expected to stop every terrorist attack, any more than they can prevent every mass shooting. If, as most investigators now appear to believe, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev acted on their own with a bomb design downloaded from the Internet, their plot posed a steep challenge to those agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responsible for detecting threats.

Nevertheless, there are reasons for concern about the two agencies’ performance, based on what is known so far about their tracking of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The older and more radical brother was first identified as a possible extremist by Russia, which asked the FBI to investigate him in early 2011. Later that year, also after prompting from Russia, the CIA asked that his name be added to a watch list maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, The Post’s Greg Miller and Sari Horowitz reported. His subsequent departure for Russia in early 2012 resulted in “a ping” to customs officials, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress on Tuesday. However, it appears the FBI never learned that Tamerlan had left the country and was not informed when he returned in July.

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Steve Neavling

Charges have been dropped against the Mississippi man accused of sending ricin-tainted letters to President Obama and other public officials, NBC News reports.

“I respect President Obama and love my country. I would never do anything to pose a threat to him or any other U.S. official,” Paul Kevin Curtis said at a news conference Tuesday following the dismissal of charges. “This past week has been a nightmare for myself and my family. My mother has suffered, as well as my children. I would like to get back to normal, which for me means being the best father I can to my children.”

A search of Curtis’ home turned up no evidence of ricin , investigators said.

Just hours after Curtis was released, authorities searched another Mississippi home, NBC News reported.

Steve Neavling

The FBI released photos today of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, urging the public to help track down the men.

Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, said one of the suspects appeared to drop a black backpack near twin explosions that killed three and injured more than 100 more.

DesLauriers said the men are considered armed and dangerous.

Steve Neavling

A jury Monday convicted a New York man of lying to the FBI about plans to train with terrorists like the Taliban or al-Qaida, the Associated Press reports.

Abdel Hameed Shehadeh now faces up to 21 years in prison when sentenced.

Shehadeh’s friends testified that he spoke of wanting to die while waging holy war against the U.S. abroad .

He first caught the suspicion of the FBI in 2009 when he purchased a one-way ticket to Islambad, the AP reported.

Hundreds of federal agents used sophisticated surveillance to investigate a 25-year-old terrorism suspect in Tampa Bay, ABC Action News reports.

Sami Osmakac, who is accused of plotting to blow up several locations in Tampa Bay, was arrested in January 2012 and is awaiting trial.

For more than a year before the arrest, the FBI had kept tabs on Osmakac using airplanes, cameras on poles and recorded audio interception, ABC Action News said.

“The most sophisticated intelligence gathering techniques available in the world are used in these investigations whether it be wiretapping, electronic bugs. photographic surveillance from above,” local defense attorney John Fitzgibbons told ABC Action News.

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Steve Neavling

Depending on whom you believe, Matthew Aaron Llaneza was either bent on committing terrorism in the name of Allah or was psychotic and easily manipulated by the FBI, the Mercury News reports.

The 28-year-old San Jose is accused of trying to detonate what turned out to be a phony bomb Friday in Oakland, Calif., and flee to Afghanistan to help train the Taliban.

But civil rights advocates and Llaneza’s former attorney in another case maintain the man was incapable of pulling off a terrorist attack without the government’s help, Mercury News reported.

“My question is whether or not the FBI stopped a crime in this case or had created one,” said Cameron Bowman, who represented Llaneza for a 2011 weapons charge. “Is this a guy who planned the crime and the FBI stopped him, or is he susceptible to being sucked into whatever is suggested to him, getting set up and not fully understanding the consequences?”

In an earlier case, Llaneza is portrayed as a troubled man struggling with psychosis and bipolar disorder, Mercury News wrote.

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