'Just a normal American kid': Boston bombing suspects were brothers from Chechnya who moved to Massachusetts with family a decade ago


By JILL REILLY, SNEJANA FARBEROV and KATIE DAVIES

PUBLISHED: 06:18 EST, 19 April 2013

The two Boston bomb suspects have been identified as two brothers who hail from Chechnya but who built 'normal' lives in America, making friends and taking part in high school sports.

Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, is on the run and considered by law enforcement to be armed and extremely dangerous.

His 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan Tzarnaev, was killed in a shootout with police late last night.
Tamerlan died in hospital with multiple gunshot wounds and possible blast injuries after a fierce gun battle late last night.


Identified: Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, is on the run


Armed and dangerous: Today 'Suspect 2' seen wearing a white cap was named as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass. His brother, left, Tamerlan Tzarnaev was killed in a shoot-out last night

Law enforcement officials told NBC News that both men are legal permanent residents of the United States, had been in the country for a year and had military experience.

The suspects are reported to be be from the Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency stemming from separatist wars.

Details of the pair began to emerge today.

They reportedly entered the United States with family in 2002 or 2003 and Tamerlan became a legal permanent resident in 2007.

Dzhokhar was born in Kyrgyzstan. The family, which also included two daughters, Bella and Amina, had the status of refugees at the time they moved to Russia.

His former teachers at his first school described him as a 'normal child' today.


‘He arrived at our school in the first form and departed in the second,’ Irina Bandurina, the secretary at Makhachkala’s School No.1, told RT.

‘They arrived from Kyrgyzstan and departed to the US. I’m telling you they lived here for a year. Not the whole year. They arrived at the school in 2001 and departed in March 2002 … There were four of them – two sisters and two brothers… It’s written here that they are from Kyrgyzstan. The Chechens.’
Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev went to a school in Makhachkala, the capital city of the Republic of Dagestan, between 1999-2001.

A friend of Dzokhar, Eric Machado told CNN the 19-year-old went to University of Amherst at U-Mass, was a lifeguard.

'There was no evidence that would lead us to believe he was capable of any of this,' he said.

Wanted: This is the poster police have released identifying the younger Tsarnaev brother


Social websites: 19-year-old Dzokhar has numerous social network profiles where he is pictured with friends


He was a young wrestling star attending Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. He won a scholarship of $2500 in the city if Cambridge.

His Page on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, shows pictures of him with friends and posing for the camera.

There is no evidence at what the brothers may have been plotting although many have pointed out the page most recently shows emocions of TNT.

It has now been overrun with people asking him how he could have committed the bombing, and wishing him dead.

He also appears in an October 2011 YouTube video clowning around with his friends. In the clip uploaded October 4 of that year, the young man sitting in the driver’s seat of a car shows off his knack for doing different accents from the Caucasus region, from Armenian to Azerbaijani, Ossetian and Chechen.

Impersonating a Armenian hood who came to Moscow to collect a debt, Tsarnaev brandishes a red pocket knife and says: 'You see this this knife? It was my grandfather's. We'll cut him, cut him!'

At one point, a friend asks Tsarnaev to do a Chechen accent. In response, Dzhokhar says with a grin: 'Now my bros are going to bring guns, we'll whack anyone, anyone.'

Later in his monologue, he goes on to say: 'Whoever points at Chechnya even with his toe, we'll whack him, whack him.'

The suspects' clashes with police began only a few hours after the FBI released photos and videos of the two young men, who were seen carrying backpacks as they mingled among marathon revelers.

The bombings killed three people and wounded more than 180 others, and authorities revealed the images to enlist the public's help finding the suspects.

The images released by the FBI depict two young men, each wearing a baseball cap, walking one behind the other near the finish line.

Richard DesLauriers, FBI agent in charge in Boston, said the suspect in the white hat, Tsarnaev, was seen setting down a bag at the site of the second of two deadly explosions.

Authorities said surveillance tape recorded late Thursday showed the Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev during a robbery of a convenience store in Cambridge, near the campus of MIT, where a university police officer was killed while responding to a report of a disturbance, said State Police Col Timothy Alben.

The officer died of multiple gunshot wounds.

From there, authorities say, the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz, keeping him with them in the car for half an hour before releasing him at a gas station in Cambridge.
The man was not injured.

The search for the vehicle led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police.

Police say the two suspects discharged several explosives at police from the vehicle during the pursuit.
And according to eyewitness reports, the two men engaged in a furious gun fight with dozens of police on a backstreet of Watertown.

'During the exchange of the gunfire, we believe that one of the suspects was struck and ultimately taken into custody,' said a police statement.

And according to eyewitness reports, the two men engaged in a furious gun fight with dozens of police on a backstreet of Watertown.

'During the exchange of the gunfire, we believe that one of the suspects was struck and ultimately taken into custody,' said a police statement.

A doctor from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said the suspect died after suffering multiple wounds from gunshots and possibly the blast of an explosive.

'There were signs of more than just gunshot wounds, said the doctor, who did not give his name.

'A second suspect was able to flee from that car and there is an active search going on at this point in time,' Colonel Timothy Alben, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, told a news conference.

'What we are looking for right now is a suspect consistent with suspect No 2, the white-capped individual who was involved in Monday's bombing of the Boston Marathon,' Alben said.
A doctor from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said the suspect died after suffering multiple wounds from gunshots and possibly the blast of an explosive.

'There were signs of more than just gunshot wounds, said the doctor, who did not give his name.

'A second suspect was able to flee from that car and there is an active search going on at this point in time,' Colonel Timothy Alben, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, told a news conference.

'What we are looking for right now is a suspect consistent with suspect No 2, the white-capped individual who was involved in Monday's bombing of the Boston Marathon,' Alben said.






Combing the area: Police search an area of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after the officer was gunned down



Vigilant: Police search neighborhoods yard by yard after a police chase and shootout with two heavily armed men


TIMELINE OF TERROR: HOW EVENTS UNFOLDED IN BOSTON

At 5:10 p.m. Thursday, investigators of the bombings release photographs and video of two suspects. They ask for the public's help in identifying the men.

Around 10:20 p.m., shots are fired on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, just outside Boston.
At 10:30 p.m., an MIT campus police officer who was responding to a disturbance is found shot multiple times in his vehicle, apparently in a confrontation with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. He is later pronounced dead.

Shortly afterward, two armed men reportedly carjack a Mercedes SUV in Cambridge. A man who was in the vehicle is held for about a half hour and then released unharmed at a gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge.

Police soon pursue the carjacked vehicle in Watertown, just west of Cambridge.

Some kind of explosive devices are thrown from the vehicle in an apparent attempt to stop police. The carjackers and police exchange gunfire. A transit police officer is seriously injured. One suspect, later identified as Suspect No. 1 in the marathon bombings, is critically injured and later pronounced dead.

Authorities launch a manhunt for the other suspect.

Around 1 a.m. Friday, gunshots and explosions are heard in Watertown, just outside Boston. Dozens of police officers and FBI agents converge on a Watertown neighborhood. A helicopter circles overhead.

Around 4:30 a.m., Massachusetts state and Boston police hold a short outdoor news briefing. They tell people living in that section of eastern Watertown to stay in their homes. They identify the carjackers as the same men suspected in the marathon bombings. Overnight, police also release a photograph of a man believed to be Suspect No. 2, apparently taken from store video earlier in the evening at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Cambridge. He is wearing a grey hoodie-style sweatshirt.

Around 6:35 a.m., Revealed the bomb suspects are from a Russian region near Chechnya and lived in the United States for at least 1 year.

Around 6:45 a.m., Surviving Boston bomb suspect is revealed as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, who has been living in Cambridge, Mass.

Chechnya: A history of terror

Muslim militants from Chechnya have a long history of unleashing separatist terror attacks on Russia – but the allegations of involvement in the Boston Marathon explosions would mark the first time they have targeted the West.

Buried in the heart of Russia’s Northern Caucasus, the Islamic state has fought against Russian rule for centuries.But it culminated in a bloody and chaotic civil war with the Russian government in 1994 that left tens of thousands dead and the region in ruins.

As a result, the area became a hotbed for extremism, and was soon infiltrated by foreign Islamic militants, including those with ties to al Qaeda.Terrorists have since unleashed a string of attacks on Russian soil and, more recently, abroad.

Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after the first Chechen war, leaving it de-facto independent and largely lawless, but then rolled back three years later following apartment building explosions in Moscow and other cities blamed on the rebels.

Chechnya has stabilized under the steely grip of Kremlin-backed local strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel whose forces were accused of massive rights abuses.

But the Islamic insurgency has spread to neighboring provinces, with Dagestan, sandwiched between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, becoming the epicenter of violence with militants launching daily attacks against police and other authorities.

On October 23 2002, over 40, mostly female, terrorists took more than 700 hostages prisoner at a Moscow theatre, demanding an end to the Russian presence in Chechnya. Dressed from head to toe in black hijabs, they became known as The Black Widows.

But when Russian security forces stormed the theater, guns blazing, the hostage takers responded by detonating homemade bombs strapped to their bodies, killing more than 100 innocent theater goers.
Then on September 1 2004, a group of 32 heavily-armed, masked men seized control of Middle School Number One and more than 1,000 hostages in Beslan, North Ossetia.

Most of the hostages were children aged from six to sixteen years old.

After a tense two-day standoff, that was beamed around the world, Russian forces raided the building.
The siege ultimately claimed the lives of 331 civilians, 11 commandos and 31 hostage-takers.

The rebels have since claimed responsibility for an array of terrorist attacks, including last year's double suicide bombing of the Moscow subway system that killed 40 people.

In March 2010, two women suicide bombers killed 40 commuters when they blew themselves up on two packed tube trains during the busy rush hour.

And in January a year later, a Chechen suicide bomber unleashed terror on Moscow's Domodedovo Airport when they blew themselves up killing 36 people.

The allegations of the Caucasus men's role in the Boston's explosions would reinforce long-held claims by Russian officials that insurgents in the Caucasus have been linked to al-Qaida.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2QulSvPap
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook