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Alleged Boston Marathon Bomber Tried To Convert FBI Agent To Islam
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 22, 2013
Modified Apr 22, 2013
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Glenn DePriest / Getty
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 22, 2013
Modified Apr 22, 2013
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What motivated Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect who was killed during a shootout with police early Friday morning? Investigators building the case against Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar now focusing their efforts on trying to understand why and how the two brothers carried out the attack, and if they had any assistance. In particular, investigators are examining Tamerlan's 2012 to Chechnya and Dagestan, which are predominantly Muslim republics in the north Caucasus region of Russia.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose family are native Chechens, was interviewed by the FBI as he prepared for the trip, acting on a tip from the Russian government, which believed that Tsarnaev had become "radicalized." In separate interviews with the Wall Street Journal, his estranged parents shared what they recalled about the FBI meeting:
His father said the officers visited one-and-a-half years ago to discuss Tamerlan's interests and had tea in his third-floor apartment. "They told me they were watching everything—what we look at on the computers, what we talked about on the phone," he said. "I said that's fine. That's what they should be doing."
The boys' mother, Mrs. Tsarnaeva, said Tamerlan was defiant in his meetings with FBI officials. "I am in a country that gives me the right to read whatever I want and watch whatever I want,'" Mrs. Tsarnaeva recalled her son saying. "He was even trying to get the FBI [agent] to convert to Islam."
According to the Journal's impressive profile on the family, Tamerlan's mother was partly responsible for her son's increasingly militant interpretation of Islam. The family immigrated to the U.S. when he was a teenager, and at the encouragement of his father, Tamerlan dedicated himself to boxing, winning regional Golden Gloves bouts. When the owner of a Massachusetts gym met Tamerlan in 2009, he recalled that he "was dressed like he was about to walk on the runway. He had on a trench coat and a pair of tight jeans, silver shoes, a white shirt unbuttoned halfway down and hair pushed back like John Travolta."
(Getty)
But in 2011, it appears that Tamerlan's life started to fall apart. His father Anzor fell ill, he couldn't afford community college, his girlfriend accused him of domestic violence, and a close friend was brutally murdered along with two others. His mother urged him to take his religion more seriously, and they both became increasingly radical. Tamerlan was known for angry arguments at a local mosque, while his father said his wife was "crazy" for covering herself up. Anzor was also "outraged" at Tamerlan for quitting boxing, supposedly because punching another man was against the Muslim faith.
Last year he spent about six months in Makhachkala, Dagestan, reading the Koran and practicing sports, according to his aunt. (His father said he spent most of that time sleeping.) It's still unclear what training, if any, Tamerlan received during his visit. One of the biggest Chechen extremist group denied any involvement with the Tsarnaev brothers, issuing this statement: "The Caucasian Mujahadeen are not fighting with the United States of America. We are at war with Russia which is not only responsible for the occupation of the Caucasus, but also for heinous crimes against Muslims."
Those who knew Tamerlan's younger brother Dzhokhar, who is drifting in and out of consciousness in a Boston hospital after reportedly shooting himself in the mouth, say that the young man was a gentle stoner, but that he behaved differently when his older brother was around. (According to his Twitter, he also visited NYC last year, deciding that "New York is so ratchet on black Friday it's ridiculous.") “[He’s] just a victim of his brother... his older brother pulled him into it,” one of their uncles tells the Post. "Dzhokhar is just a kid who wanted to have older brother to look up at. Except for being a murderer, he’s been a loving brother."
A month after returning from Dagestan last year, Tamerlan created a YouTube page featuring multiple jihadist videos, including one video of Abdul al-Hamid al-Juhani, whom the Times describes as "an important ideologue in Chechnya," and Feiz Mohammad, an extremist Salafi Lebanese preacher. However, the FBI did not follow up with Tamerlan after he returned from Dagestan. Senator Lindsey Graham said Tsarnaev’s name was misspelled at some crucial point during booking the trip, and so his correct name never went into “the system,” thwarting the FBI from discovering it. (It's also theorized that Tamerlan used an alias.)
"This is the latest in a series of cases like this ... where the FBI is given information about someone as being a potential terrorist," Representative Peter King said Sunday. “They (the FBI) look at them, and then they don’t take action. And then they go out and commit murders."
Tagged
boston marathon
boston marathon bombing
tamerlan tsarnaev
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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