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Profile Of Tsarnaev Brothers

April 19, 2013

by Claire Bigg

The young men identified as suspects in this week's Boston Marathon bombing are brothers of ethnic Chechen origin with roots in Central Asia. They came to the United States as boys, where they each took a keen interest in sports.

The suspect who is now the object of a massive manhunt was identified on April 19 as 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Police launched the hunt for Tsarnaev after his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan -- also a suspect in the bombing -- was killed earlier on April 19 following a shootout with police in Watertown, near Boston.

Exact details of their biographies are still unclear. But from media reports, interviews with relatives in Russia and the United States, and Internet activity apparently by the brothers themselves, a picture is emerging of two brothers who grew up in Kyrgyzstan before being schooled in Daghestan and then moving to New England around a decade ago.

Both brothers were born in Kyrgyzstan, according to a Kyrgyz Interior Ministry official speaking to RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service.

According to Ruslan Tsarni, who identified himself to U.S. media as the boys' uncle, the family moved to the United States about a decade ago, in 2003.

In a media appearance on April 19, Tsarni distanced himself from his nephews, rejecting the idea that the two might have acted out of religious or political hatred. He speculated that their actions rather stemmed for their being "losers" who resented fellow immigrants who had successfully settled in the United States.

He said the young men's father had recently moved to Russia, adding that "someone radicalized them, but it wasn't my brother."

Prior to moving to the United States, the family also spent time in the North Caucasus.

On what appears to be his vKontakte page, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev says he studied at School No. 1 in Makhachkala, Daghestan, between 1999 and 2001.

The school principal, Tamirmagomed Davudov, told Interfax that Dzhokhar attended first grade, while his brother Tamerlan attended eighth grade.

“They studied one year at our school," Yelena Bandurina, a spokeswoman for the school, told RFE/RL. "There were also two sisters. They arrived from Kyrgyzstan and then moved to America.”

The brothers entered the United States sometime between 2002 and 2004.

Dzhokhar was later enrolled at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Massachusetts, winning a $2,500 scholarship in 2011 and becoming an all-star wrestler in high school.

Dzhokhar became a naturalized American citizen on September 11, 2012, according to "U.S. News."

He is currently enrolled as a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

Tamerlan, meanwhile, appears to have had Olympic boxing ambitions, training at a martial arts center in Boston and appearing in a photo essay by Johannes Hirn called "Will Box For Passport" and going on to represent New England in a 2009 national boxing competition in Utah.

The captions quote Tamerlan as saying unless his native Chechnya becomes independent, he would rather compete for the United States than for Russia.

"I don't have a single American friend," he is quoted as saying. "I don't understand them."

Tamerlan studied at Bunker Hill Community College with aims of becoming an engineer.

What appears to be Tamerlan's YouTube page lists links labeled "terrorists" and videos of Islamic teachings.

Meanwhile, those who knew the brothers in Cambridge are expressing shock.

Larry Aaronson, a former teacher at Dzhokhar's high school, wrote on his Facebook page that the news was "surreal." He added, "I cannot believe he was capable of such a heinous crime and of so many murders."

Dzhokhar's vKontakte page lists his world view as "Islam," his personal priority as " career and money," and his languages as English, Russian, and Chechen.

It also has jokes. "A car's on the move. A Daghestani, a Chechen, and an Ingush are sitting in it. Question -- who's driving? Answer -- the police."

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/boston-bombing-tsar/24962891.html

Copyright (c) 2013. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.