hendren
global group news blog
Tuesday,
latest details emerged from U.S. officials and family members concerning how
the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects may have been persuaded by an
agitator, anti-American strain of Islam. They had been radicalized by sources
on the web, not through direct contact with terror groups said A U.S. senator.
Younger brother, Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, 19-year-old university student’s condition was improved to fair
from serious as investigators continued building their case against him. After
being charged Monday, he possibly will face the death penalty with working in
partner with his brother in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker
bombs that killed three people. Older brother previously reported dead.
Over 260 people were injured by the bomb blasts last week
while about 50 were still hospitalized.
There is “no question” that older brother Tamerlan
Tsarnaev was “the dominant force” behind the attacks, and that the brothers had
apparently been radicalized by material on the internet rather than by contact
with militant groups overseas Republican Sen. Richard Burr stated after the
Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed by federal law enforcement officials
in Washington.
Brothers, both Russian-born ethnic Chechens,
have no links to terror groups based on what the authorities believed in. On
the other hand, two U.S. officials said Tuesday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 —
who died last week in a gunbattle — frequently looked at extremist websites,
including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication
produced by al-Qaida’s
Yemen affiliate. The said magazine has endorsed lone-wolf terror attacks.
Because both officials were not authorized to discuss the
investigation they spoke on condition of anonymity.
Tamerlan was steered toward a strict strain
of Islam under the influence of a Muslim convert known to the Tsarnaev family
only as Misha, according to family members reached in the U.S. and abroad by
The Associated Press.
According to family members, who said he
turned to websites and literature claiming that the CIA was behind the Sept.
11, 2001 attacks, after befriending Misha, Tamerlan gave up boxing, stopped
studying music and began opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Somehow, he just took his brain,” said
Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland, who recalled conversations with
Tamerlan’s worried father about Misha’s influence.
“You could always hear his younger brother
and sisters say, `Tamerlan said this,’ and `Tamerlan said that.’ Dzhokhar
loved him. He would do whatever Tamerlan would say,” recalled Elmirza
Khozhugov, the ex-husband of Tamerlan’s sister. He spoke by telephone from his
home in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Khozhugov said, the brothers, who came to the
U.S. from Russia a decade ago, were raised in a home that followed Sunni Islam,
the religion’s largest sect, but were not regulars at the mosque and rarely
discussed religion.
Then Tamerlan met Misha, a heavyset bald man
with a reddish beard around 2008 or 2009. Khozhugov
is not quite sure where they met but held as true that they attended a
Boston-area mosque together.
