Boston suspects hail Islam, Chechen independence
20 April 2013 6:38 AM IST
Abusive comments in Russian and English were flooding onto Tsarnaev’s page on VK, a Russian-language social media site, on Friday after he was identified as a suspect in the bombing of the Boston marathon.
Police launched a massive manhunt for Tsarnaev, 19, after killing his older brotherTamerlan Tsarnaev in a shootout overnight.
On the site, the younger Tsarnaev identifies himself as a 2011 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It says he went to primary school in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, a province in Russia that borders Chechnya, and lists his languages as English, Russian and Chechen.
His ‘World view’ is listed as ‘Islam’ and his ‘Personal priority’ 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.
The page also reveals a sense of humour, around his identity as a member of a minority from southern Russia’s restive Caucasus, which includes Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and other predominately Muslim regions that have seen two decades of unrest since the fall of the Soviet Union.
A video labelled ‘tormenting my brother’ shows a man resembling his dead brother Tamerlan laughing and imitating the accents of different Caucasian ethnic groups.
He has posted his own joke:
‘A car goes by with a Chechen, a Dagestani and an Ingush inside. Question: who is driving?’
‘The answer: the police.’
Elsewhere on the internet, a photo essay entitled ‘Will box for passport’ shows the older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev practicing boxing at a gym. The captions identify him as a Chechen heavyweight boxer, in the United States for five years.
‘I don’t have a single American friend,’ one caption quotes him as saying. ‘I don’t understand them.’
RUSSIA’S CAUCASUS: BREEDING GROUND FOR GLOBAL TERROR
Militants from Chechnya and other restive regions in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus have targeted Moscow and other areas with bombings and hostage-takings, but the allegations of involvement in the Boston Marathon explosions would mark the first time they had conducted a terror attack in the West.The conflict in Chechnya began in 1994 as a separatist war, but quickly morphed into an Islamic insurgency whose adepts vow to carve out an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus. 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. Militants from Chechnya and neighboring provinces have launched a long series of terror attacks in Russia.
Police launched a massive manhunt for Tsarnaev, 19, after killing his older brotherTamerlan Tsarnaev in a shootout overnight.
On the site, the younger Tsarnaev identifies himself as a 2011 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It says he went to primary school in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, a province in Russia that borders Chechnya, and lists his languages as English, Russian and Chechen.
His ‘World view’ is listed as ‘Islam’ and his ‘Personal priority’ 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.
The page also reveals a sense of humour, around his identity as a member of a minority from southern Russia’s restive Caucasus, which includes Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and other predominately Muslim regions that have seen two decades of unrest since the fall of the Soviet Union.
A video labelled ‘tormenting my brother’ shows a man resembling his dead brother Tamerlan laughing and imitating the accents of different Caucasian ethnic groups.
He has posted his own joke:
‘A car goes by with a Chechen, a Dagestani and an Ingush inside. Question: who is driving?’
‘The answer: the police.’
Elsewhere on the internet, a photo essay entitled ‘Will box for passport’ shows the older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev practicing boxing at a gym. The captions identify him as a Chechen heavyweight boxer, in the United States for five years.
‘I don’t have a single American friend,’ one caption quotes him as saying. ‘I don’t understand them.’
RUSSIA’S CAUCASUS: BREEDING GROUND FOR GLOBAL TERROR
Militants from Chechnya and other restive regions in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus have targeted Moscow and other areas with bombings and hostage-takings, but the allegations of involvement in the Boston Marathon explosions would mark the first time they had conducted a terror attack in the West.The conflict in Chechnya began in 1994 as a separatist war, but quickly morphed into an Islamic insurgency whose adepts vow to carve out an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus. 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. Militants from Chechnya and neighboring provinces have launched a long series of terror attacks in Russia.
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