New York Republican Rep. Peter King said Friday that the potential radicalization of members of the Muslim Chechen community should be investigated after the Boston Marathon bombing.
“We can’t be politically correct,” he said on CNN’s “The Lead.” “I think we have to see, has radicalization has extended into the Chechen community?”
Host Jake Tapper asked King about one of the suspect’s apparent YouTube pages, where a video had been posted featuring Feiz Mohammad.
Tapper asked if King knew anything about Mohammad, who is described as a “fundamentalist Australian Muslim preacher.”
“I’m not aware of that radical cleric, but I do know that the idea of radical clerics in the Muslim community — again, it’s a small percentage — but they have had a disproportionate influence,” King said. “And I think that is something that has to be looked at. We can’t be politically correct. I think we have to see, has radicalization has extended into the Chechen community? Because as I said, up until now there has been absolutely no evidence that I am aware of Chechen Muslims being radicalized. But obviously something happened to these two, and it is something that has to be really examined and examined fully. And also I think we have to realize that, you know, earlier in the week, Jake, there was talk — there was no intel, no chatter, no evidence or indication that this attack was going to come.”
“And I think that’s because we rely on foreign intel,” he continued. “The fact is, I think it is very typical for al-Qaida to carry out attacks from overseas, and we have to be very concerned about radical movements in this country, or in this community in this country that carry out the attacks as we saw in New York in 2009 and 2010 by people living in the community. And that’s why I think it is important for the police, the local police to build up their intelligence to find out what’s happening in the communities among disaffected people or people like these two brothers who seemed to have everything going for them.”
King had compared the bombings to the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack and said that this particular attack appeared to him that the suspect did not intend to survive.
“My speculation is that I don’t think these two ever intended to escape. I think they had so many explosives — they had explosives for the marathon, they had explosives with them today. You don’t have the second round of explosives unless you are going to carry out a second wave of attacks. So when they went out today, I don’t think it was to escape because they had so much explosives in their vehicle with them. They had heavy duty weapons. I think they were going to go down fighting. They were going to just go and again almost random use of explosives or go to another city. This was not just a one-off as far as attacking the marathoners as bad as that was. They had apparently quite a few other explosives with them which to me could only be used for a second round of attacks.”