Boston Terror Attack

Suspect two : Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev : age19

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'I don’t understand them,' bombing suspect said of Americans
Published April 19, 2013
| FoxNews.com
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The brothers behind Monday's deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon are believed to have come to the U.S. from Chechnya as long as a decade ago, but apparently never fit in with the American culture.
“I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them,” the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police hours after the pair was identified as suspects, told a photographer in 2009.
What drove him and his brother, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, who lived with him in Cambridge, Mass., to perpetrate the deadly attack — which killed three people and injured 176 others — is not clear. They are believed to be Muslim and to have had military training overseas. But the older brother, who was 26, also worked out in a gym and dreamed of making the U.S. Olympic boxing team, according to an online photojournalism slideshow that chronicled his training.
The journalist who created the project, Johannes Hirn, could not be reached for comment. But one caption in his account described the family's odyssey to America.
“Tamerlan fled Chechnya with his family because of the conflict in the early 90s, and lived there for years in Kazakhstan before getting to the United States as a refugee,” read the caption.
Tamerlan previously studied at Bunker Hill Community College for three semesters — fall 2006, spring 2007 and fall 2008 — in hopes of becoming an engineer. He took off a semester from his studies to practice boxing at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Center in Boston.
His brother is believed to be the same Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who won a $2,500 scholarship in 2011 from the city of Cambridge, according to online records. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev later enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
The father of the suspects, reached in Makhachkala, Russia, by The Associated Press, characterized his younger son as an intelligent and accomplished young man.
"My son is a true angel," Anzor Tsarnaev said. "Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here."
Anzor Tsarnaev called on his son to surrender peacefully, but reportedly warned the United States that “all hell will break loose” if he’ll killed. He told ABC News that he spoke to his sons by phone earlier this week. He said his sons reassured him, saying, "Everything is good, Daddy. Everything is very good."
"Give up. Give up. You have a bright future ahead of you,” Anzor Tsarneav said, according to ABC News. “Come home to Russia.”
He continued: "If they killed him, then all hell would break loose."
An uncle of the brothers, also reached by The Associated Press, said that the men lived together near Boston and have been in the United States for about a decade. They traveled here together from the Russian region near Chechnya, according to Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, according to a high-ranking law enforcement official, spent six months living in Russia last year. He departed for Russia at the beginning of last year and returned to the United States in mid-2002, the official told FoxNews.com.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has never traveled outside the U.S. and applied for asylum and became a naturalized American citizen, the official said.
FoxNews.com's Jana Winter, Joshua Rhett Miller and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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'Turn yourself in and ask forgiveness,' angry uncle of bombing suspect demands
By Joshua Rhett Miller
Published April 19, 2013
| FoxNews.com
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The outraged uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect currently eluding authorities called on his nephew to surrender and to ask forgiveness from the victims of Monday’s blast.
Ruslan Tsarni, of Montgomery Village, Md., told reporters outside his home that he last saw Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarneav in 2005 and said he was ashamed of their actions.
“I say Dzhokhar, if you’re alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured,” a visibly angry Tsarni said, adding that he would have alerted authorities if he knew of his nephews’ alleged plan.
“I respect this country, I love this country,” he continued. “[The bombing] has nothing to do with Chechnya … He put a shame on our family, he put a shame on the entire Chechyan ethnicity.”
Asked what he believed provoked his nephews, Tsarni replied: "Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves, these are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else, anything else to do with religion is a fraud. It's a fake. We're Muslims. We're ethnic Chechyans."
The father of the suspects, reached in Makhachkala, Russia, by The Associated Press, has also called on his son to surrender peacefully, but reportedly warned the United States that “all hell will break loose” if he’ll killed.
"My son is a true angel," Anzor Tsarnaev told The Associated Press. "Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here."
Anzor Tsarnaev, who characterized his younger son as an intelligent and accomplished young man, told ABC News that he spoke to his sons by phone earlier this week. He said his sons reassured him, saying, "Everything is good, Daddy. Everything is very good."
"Give up. Give up. You have a bright future ahead of you,” Anzor Tsarneav said, according to ABC News. “Come home to Russia.”
He continued: "If they killed him, then all hell would break loose."
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April 19, 2013


CONNECTICUT STATE POLICE UPDATE RE: BOSTON BOMBING CASE



UPDATE: New vehicle search.

All calls regarding this case should be directed to Boston investigators.



Since the tragic bombing that took place in Boston on April 15, the Connecticut State Police has monitored all intelligence related to this investigation.

Today, April 19, 2013, the Connecticut State Police received information from the Boston Investigation that a suspect vehicle could POSSIBLY be occupied by a wanted suspect.

The vehicle is described by BOSTON AREA AUTHORITIES; the SUSPECT MAY BE OPERATING A:



1999 Green Honda Civic

REGISTRATION: 116 GC7 Massachusetts

Connecticut Troopers are posted strategically in our State and continue to communicate with Massachusetts authorities.

THIS CASE REMAINS UNDER INVESTIGATION.

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Ties between Islamic extremist groups and Chechnya well-documented
Published April 19, 2013
| FoxNews.com
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Reports that the suspects in the Boston bombing are believed to be from the region near Chechnya may have caught some by surprise -- rebels in Chechnya are known for their violent and long-running campaign to break away from Russia, but not for exporting terror to America.
But congressional researchers and foreign policy analysts have long tracked a connection between the Chechnya region and Islamic extremists sympathizing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. If the suspects are indeed Chechen, analysts told Fox News they may represent part of a jihadi network which has made its way to American soil.
"The Chechen jihadi network is very extensive," Middle East analyst Walid Phares said Friday. "They have a huge network inside Russia and Chechnya."
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Chechen rebels are motivated by two things - a desire for independence from Russia and Islamic radicalism. He speculated that, if the suspects are Chechen, they could be motivated more by the latter. "They could well be supported by a significant international network," he said.
One suspect is dead and another is on the loose, as federal and local law enforcement are engaged in what Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick called a "massive manhunt." Many questions are still unanswered.
Sources said authorities are investigating whether Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass., and his brother may have had military training overseas. Reports have also indicated they have a connection with Dagestan, another restive Russian region where Islamic militants have gone after Russian targets. The uncle of the suspects told reporters late Friday morning that one of the suspects was in fact born in Dagestan, saying this has "nothing to do with Chechnya" and "Chechens are peaceful people."
The ties between major Islamic extremist groups and Chechnya are well-documented, particularly pertaining to extremists' support for the separatists in Chechnya.
The Taliban, when it was in power, was one of the only governments to recognize Chechnya's independence.
An Al Qaeda-tied Chechen warlord named Ibn al-Khattab was, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, said to have met with Usama bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He was killed in 2002 by the Russians.
Signs of Islamic radicals fueling unrest in Chechnya continued to surface. According to the report by the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, foreign fighters have flocked to places like Chechnya, Bosnia and others with a jihadi presence. The 2010 report said lands like Chechnya -- as well as Pakistan and Somalia -- are seen by "jihadi theoreticians" as places where "fighting is not only legitimate but also compulsory." The same report also noted Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has tried to align the insurgency "with the global jihadist narrative," supporting the establishment of an "Islamic emirate in the Caucasus."
Whether Chechens, however, have actually gone to the frontlines in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a matter of fierce dispute. A Congressional Research Service report earlier this year said "some Chechen fighters fighting alongside Taliban/Al Qaeda forces have been captured or killed."
But other studies have sharply questioned this kind of reporting, claiming that American officials and media were buying into a Russian narrative that Moscow was simply fighting Islamic terrorists in Chechnya.
A 2004 report from University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth professor Brian Glyn Williams described a more complicated picture.
"While it is certainly possible that Chechen individuals made their way to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan, the complete absence of even a single Chechen POW among the thousands captured by the Northern Alliance and the U.S. would clearly refute the wild claims that the Chechens formed the 'largest contingent of Al Qaeda's foreign legion'," he wrote.
Williams told FoxNews.com, rather, that "there's a jihad element that has grown larger and more important" inside of Chechnya in the wake of bloody wars with the Russians. He said the official leadership is more secular and moderate, but there is an extremist element that sees the Russians as "infidels." He said the Al Qaeda links are tenuous, though Al Qaeda "sympathizes" with them.
Regardless of the motivations of the suspects in the Boston bombing, which killed three and injured dozens, Phares said it is possible they still have broader "logistical support" within the United States.
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