Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan, are accused of setting off a homemade bomb near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 200 on April 15, 2013.
Dzhokhar, then 19, and his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan were cornered by police after a four-day manhunt. Tamerlan died after an alleged exchange of fire with police and Dzhokhar was wounded.
During a court filing on Friday, the lawyers asserted that their claim is based on information obtained from their client’s family as well as other sources, The Boston Globe reported.
“We base this on information from our client’s family and other sources that the FBI made more than one visit to talk with Anzor [his father], Zubeidat [his mother] and Tamerlan, questioned Tamerlan about his Internet searches, and asked him to be an informant, reporting on the Chechen and Muslim community,” the lawyers said.
The lawyers also stated that Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have wrongly interpreted interactions he had with the FBI as pressure from the agency and that they could have “increased his paranoia and distress.”
The defense is seeking to investigate those factors as it wants to show Tamerlan as a dominating family member who might have coaxed the younger Dzhokhar to take part in the bombing last year.
Critics say the bombing was a false flag operation and a lot of smoking guns over the suspects have been ignored by the mainstream media.
The father of the suspects has said that his sons are innocent, stressing that they have been framed by the FBI.
RA/MB