“Officials are concerned that Heda Umarova, 23, may have been radicalized to Islamist violence.” The conventional wisdom is that Muslims are “radicalized” by outrage over Western political policies, which is a very dangerous line to take, as it leads to the idea that appeasement will solve the problem. It is off-limits for officials to consider the possibility that “radicalization” might not depend on non-Muslim actions at all, but stem from imperatives with Islamic texts and teachings.
“Feds Searching for Friend of Boston Marathon Suspect, ‘Concern’ Over Chechnya Trip,” by Michele McPhee for ABC News, March 4 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):
U.S. counter-terrorism officials are attempting to track down a female friend of the accused Boston Marathon bomber after she traveled to Chechnya last year and is believed to have since posted “alarming” jihadi imagery online, officials told ABC News.
Officials are concerned that Heda Umarova, 23, may have been radicalized to Islamist violence — allegedly just like her friend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged in the April 15 bombings, and his brother Tamerlan, who was killed in a police shootout — and could pose a threat to Americans overseas because her U.S. passport allows easy foreign travel.
Umarova left Boston with her family in July with a round-trip ticket to visit relatives in their native Chechnya, but she failed to return to Massachusetts with her parents at the end of August. Her family told federal authorities and ABC News she stayed behind to get married after she met a man there during Ramadan.
Her younger brothers, Adam, 20, and Junes, 18, were already under suspicion by some investigators because of their online support for the Tsarnaev brothers and social media postings that included tweets with Dzhokhar a day before the blasts. A photo of Junes Umarov and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lighting fireworks appeared on one social networking site in January 2013, an ABC News investigation found.
“No one is calling Heda a terrorist but her travel has certainly garnered some attention. People are concerned that a 23-year-old is in Chechnya, a country that she fled from… and now she is deciding to stay on her own,” a ranking law enforcement source involved in the Boston Marathon investigation told ABC News. The source said that her decision to stay in Chechnya also raised eyebrows because, at least until she is married, she didn’t seem to have any “obvious means” of support.
“We were already concerned about the social media exchanged with her brothers, who remain on the radar, especially the younger brother Junes, who was Dzhokhar’s best friend,” the source added.
And now, sources said, the FBI has been monitoring Heda Umarova’s apparent Internet posts recently, which include depictions of Chechen jihadis brandishing weapons and a photo-shopped image of a U.S. passport in a carry-on bag bearing the black flag of jihad.
Heda and her brothers did not respond to multiple attempts by ABC News to reach them through their parents and social media to comment on the sources’ allegations.
In a brief interview at his family’s home last month, Heda’s father Hamzat Umarov told ABC News that he spoke to the “FBI and CIA” about the photographs but refused to talk about whether he believes his daughter is becoming radicalized.
“What does it mean, pictures? Pictures can be anywhere. It doesn’t mean anything, the pictures. We don’t want to talk about it. We talk with the FBI, everybody. The FBI came, CIA, everybody’s come,” he said.
Umarova’s trip back to the same country from which her parents fled as refugees a decade ago to seek political asylum in the U.S. brought federal agents back to her family’s Chelsea home — the same second-floor apartment that armed agents searched last April during the manhunt for the accused marathon bomber, several law enforcement officials told ABC News….
pongidae rex says
So they enter this country as ‘refugees’, then return a few years later to the country they fled, as affluent tourists with USA passports…
The State Department of the USA is a pack of fools.
JamesonRocks says
I sure hope this family is being monitored as the Boston Marathon is coming soon…
richard Sherman says
Muslims revere the SOCIOPATH MUHAMMAD WHO PERSONALLY DECAPITATED 900 UNARMED JEWS in 627. They revere a sociopath. They become sociopaths. That is why they are “radicalized”…case closed.
John Spielman says
I hope the govt revokes this woman’s passport
dumbledoresarmy says
Yep. Next time she tries to use it, she should discover that it has been annulled. And all her identifying particulars should be circulated to the intelligence agencies, police, military and border guards of all non-Muslim lands, not forgetting Russia and China, with the accompanying advisory: “if you encounter this female, and she claims to be a US citizen..she *aint* and we don’t give a damn what you do to her, because she *aint* one of ours anymore.”
Sam says
Hope we do not connect the families, mosques, friends and other muslims these “radicalized” people have relations with to terrorism for diversity sake. That would be very racist I think. What do you say?
veggiedog says
But how can we tell? That is at the core of the problem.
mortimer says
“Radicalized”? When is a Muslim radicalized? Does giving money to jihadists count as ‘radical’? Because virtually all Muslims give money to jihad whenever they pay their 2.5% zakat or buy halal products, etc. All Muslims know they are giving money to jihad. Are they ‘radical’ too?
veggiedog says
Agreed Mortimer, thank you, all are radicalized, and the sooner we open our eyes the better for all.
Guy Macher says
So long as she stays in her chosen Islamic hell hole, I don’t care. If you return to such a place, you should not be allowed back into civilized countries.
Veracious_one says
…refused to talk about whether he believes his daughter is becoming radicalized.
I bet he already knows the obvious answer….
Bezelel says
if it walks like a duck, etc etc… it might be a jihadi, especially if it’s a muzzie chechneyan duck with ties to known murderers. Why wasn’t she deported?
Donovan Nuera says
Why have they not shut down that radicalized Cambridge mosque/terror training center yet? It is time to put Heda Umarova on the no-fly list at least and deport the entire family. And then jail all of the “groupies” who think Tsarnaev is innocent…they are not hard to find as they all have FB accounts. Oh yeah, please no more Chechen immigrants being allowed in and make sure the ones we let flood in here are all accounted for. Islam isLAME/ Sharia=Diarrhea!
Leaveit says
So let’s see, Heda was unemployed, no source of income except mommy and daddy, not attending any college like the brothers and sister, sitting around online all day defending a little shit who sat a backpack next to an 8 year old child “Johar” picked out to kill, doing some prison visits and going on that lunatics Jones show. Yeah quite the life she carved out for herself. If her parents send her a dime they need to have their citizenship revoked, and then they need to be deported back to whence they came. Her passport should be revoked right now, she can come back here on a single flight slip given by a consulate to ask for it back. Or she can use her husband’s nationality to get a Chechnyan passport and deal with that for the rest of her life. In any event I am worried that her father is so disinterested in these pictures she’s posting online, pretending he doesn’t know what they mean. If he has a business people had better not be supporting it, because he’s no doubt paying a dowry to some poor schmuck who just married his spoiled brat of a daughter, and U.S. dollars Hamzad is sending over there to support her could be supporting something very deadly to the U.S. and clearly he’s either in on what she’s doing or being purposefully stupid about what she’s doing in her native land. This entire family stinks to high hell, as far as what they are involved in. Where is their income coming from? Where ever it is coming from we need to stop supporting it. People in Boston he most likely has a business there, so it’s on your shoulders to cut the money train off for his future terrorist club out of Chelsea.