- The suspects are brothers of Chechen origin with the last name Tsarnaev. The suspect at large, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is 19, was born in Kyrgyzstan and has a Massachusetts driver’s license. The dead suspect was identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, born in Russia.
- Tamerlan Tsarnaev was run over by a vehicle during the firefight.
- The Tsarnaevs came with their family to the United States almost a decade ago (2002 or 2003) from Kyrgyzstan, after living briefly in the Dagestan region of Russia. Tamerlan, who was killed early Friday morning in a shootout with law enforcement officers, was 15 at the time. Dzhokhar was only 8.
- Tamerlan Tsarnaev became a legal permanent resident in 2007.
- Dzhokhar became a naturalized citizen in 2012, but Tamerlan still held a green card — but that a 2009 domestic violence complaint was standing in his way.
- Tamerlan has a three-year-old daughter with Katherine Russell, 24, who converted to Islam for her husband
- Update 9 p.m. Friday, 19 Apr 2013: second suspect captured alive
The younger brother, Djohar Tsarnaev, 19 years old, on the run
What's interesting about the 19-year-old brother is that he spent all his teenage years in the US, and yet he did not have a FB account and was on the Russian social network (vk) instead. He is the only teenager I know of that is not on FB.
On the site, he describes himself as speaking Chechen as well as English and Russian. His world view is described as “Islam” and he says his personal goal is “career and money.”
He has posted links to videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war and to Islamic web pages with titles like “Salamworld, my religion is Islam” and “There is no God but Allah, let that ring out in our hearts”.
He also has links to pages calling for independence for Chechnya, a region of Russia that lost its bid for secession after two wars in the 1990s.
Friday afternoon: police still on hunt for suspect #2
*** Wed, April 18, 2013 ***
Earlier today, the FBI released a set of photographs and a video of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, asking the public for its help in finding them. If you know anything about these individuals, you are urged to contact the FBI here: https://bostonmarathontips.fbi.gov/, or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
suspect #1
suspect #2
The 8-year-old that was killed, and the suspect still on the run as of Friday afternoon
The family had come to the United States fleeing from war.
In Kyrgystan, they were part of a Chechen diaspora that dates back to 1943, when Josef Stalin deported most Chechens from their homeland and over concerns they were collaborating with the invading Nazi Army. Most returned to Chechnya in the 1950s, after the death of Stalin and lifting of the deportation order, but some stayed.
The deportation was a searing, and in some cases, radicalizing experience. Among the former diaspora in Kyrgyzstan was the first rebel president of Chechnya in the post-Soviet period, Dzhokhar Dudayev, said Edil Baisalov, a former presidential chief of staff in Kyrgyzstan.
*****
Tamerlan fought in the Golden Gloves National Tournament in 2009, and he was noticed by a young photographer, Johannes Hirn, who took him as a subject for an essay assignment in a photojournalism class at Boston University. “There are no values anymore,” Tamerlan said in the essay, which was later published in Boston University’s magazine The Comment. “People can’t control themselves.”
Boston Marathon: the runner who was knocked to the ground by the bomb blast is 78 years old and he did manage to get to the finish line.
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