Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, left, speaks at a news conference in Makhachkala, the southern Russian province of Dagestan in this April 25, 2013 file photo. Two government officials tell The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies added the Boston bombing suspects’ mother to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack. At right is her sister-in-law Maryam.The angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects insists that her sons are innocent and that she’s no terrorist.
But Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.
In photos of her as a younger woman, Tsarnaeva wears a low-cut blouse and has her hair teased like a 1980s rock star. After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, she went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.
But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.
Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery and that she’s just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She fiercely defends her sons – Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured.