The government said it has no evidence Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, had been contacted by the FBI to become an informant, according to the Associated Press.
Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused in the Boston Marathon bombing last year, said in court papers on Friday that the government was withholding a wealth of information that would show that his older brother, Tamerlan, instigated the bombing plot, according to the AP.
The defense lawyers are seeking to show that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was under the influence of his brother, who was ideologically driven and had a history of violence, and that Dzhokhar should therefore be spared the death penalty, the AP reported.
They want the government to release the family's applications for asylum in the United States as well as documents of F.B.I. contacts with Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the bombing in which, the lawyers said, the F.B.I. asked him to be an informant on the Chechen and Muslim communities, according to the AP.
Dzhokhar's lawyers, in their filing, note that a report released this week by the House Homeland Security Committee suggests that government agents monitored Tamerlan and his communications during 2011 and possibly 2012, the AP reported.
The report said the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted a threat assessment of Tamerlan, an ethnic Chechen, in response to a 2011 alert from the Russian government that he was becoming radicalized, according to the AP.
