Suspect in Boston Bombing Talked Jihad in Russia
By ELLEN BARRY
KIZLYAR, Russia - It's not every day that a well-dressed American shows up
in this town, where shaggy cows meander over deeply rutted roads, so people
remember Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Among the things that made the young visitor
stand out, two acquaintances recalled on Thursday, was his avid interest in
waging jihad.
"He already had jihad views when he came; I think because he was Chechen, he
was rooting for his homeland," Zaur M. Zakaryayev, 29, a member of a Salafi
advocacy organization, the Union of the Just, said Thursday. "When he got
here he was surprised at the conditions. I think he expected to find a
full-fledged war, that one people was fighting with another."
These new accounts out of Kizlyar, where Mr. Tsarnaev spent time with a
cousin who is a prominent Salafi Islamist leader, have begun to flesh out a
picture of what he did during his six months in Russia last year.
On Sunday agents from the Federal Security Service, the successor to the
Soviet-era K.G.B., interrogated Mr. Tsarnaev's cousin, who is in police
custody, asking if he impressed the young man with "extremist" views, his
lawyer said.
But the cousin, Magomed Kartashov, told them it was the other way around. In
interviews, several young men here agreed, saying that Mr. Kartashov spent
hours trying to stop Mr. Tsarnaev from "going to the forest," or joining one
of the militant cells scattered throughout the volatile region, locked in
low-level guerrilla warfare with the police.
"Magomed explained to him at length that violent methods are not right," Mr.
Zakaryayev said.
Mr. Tsarnaev's friends in Kizlyar may be responsible for a crucial change in
his thinking. When he left, he was no longer focused on the local grievances
that fueled the fighting against the police - but instead broader issues in
the Islamic world, including the effect of United States and Russian policy
in the Middle East.
Rasim B. Ibadamov said that by last summer, Mr. Tsarnaev was taking steps
that suggested he had let go of the idea of joining the underground - for
instance, applying to renew his Russian passport. "What I can say is there
was the impression that Tamerlan listened to Magomed and to some extent, he
changed," Mr. Ibadamov said. "His behavior changed. He started to read more,
and to read different books. In general, as far as I understand, he changed
his views."
Mr. Tsarnaev's body was interred Thursday in an undisclosed location, the
police in Worcester, Mass., said in a statement. The announcement
represented an end to a grim effort to find a place to bury the bombing
suspect, who was shot by the police and run over by his brother, Dzhokhar,
after the two tried to elude the authorities during a chase that began April
18.
A long list of cemeteries had refused to accept the body.
"A courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the
assistance needed to properly bury the deceased," read a statement on the
Police Department's Web site.
Mr. Tsarnaev's relationship with Mr. Kartashov, which was first reported by
Time magazine on Wednesday, may help explain his mentality as he returned to
the United States. Kizlyar is one of the most dangerous spots in Dagestan's
insurgency, in which militants kill scores of policemen every year and
counterterrorism raids can leave neighborhoods in ruins. Mr. Kartashov once
served as a police inspector there, but left the force around 10 years ago
and has since become a charismatic Salafi leader.
His group protests police counterterrorism tactics in the region, which are
often brutal, and it burned American and French flags after the release of
the anti-Islam YouTube film "Innocence of Muslims." The authorities in
Dagestan have viewed Mr. Kartashov's activity with mounting suspicion. He
was arrested two weeks ago, after the police stopped a wedding convoy that
was flying black flags with Arabic phrases.
"To all our questions there was only one answer: 'We only have two flags:
the flag of the Russian Federation and the flag of the republic of Dagestan.
Do not raise any other flag,' " Mr. Ibadamov said. Mr. Kartashov now faces a
possible 10-year sentence for resisting the police.
Mr. Ibadamov said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev's parents had first turned to Mr.
Kartashov for counseling during earlier trips to Russia, and that when Mr.
Tsarnaev came to Russia last year they wanted him to follow suit.
"I understand that they had a kind of Islamic vacuum," he said. "They turned
to Magomed as a knowledgeable person. Magomed was happy about this; he
explained what Islam was, what his views were. And the father was
complaining that Tamerlan was sort of a tough kid, a boxer."
When Mr. Tsarnaev arrived in Kizlyar to consult with Mr. Kartashov, they all
noticed: "His pants, his scarf, his glasses, everything in aggregate set him
apart from the mass," Mr. Ibadamov said. He was partial to the Internet
sermons of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who called for jihad against the
United States and was killed in a drone strike in 2011.
But after spending a week in Kizlyar in conference with his cousin, he
seemed to have new goals. Mr. Zakaryayev said he ran into Mr. Tsarnaev
repeatedly at a Salafi mosque in Makhachkala, Dagestan's capital, and was
increasingly sure he would not join an insurgent group. "He could have gone
if he wanted," he said. "It's not hard to do it, because every day there is
a special operation, and every day people are leaving."
When Mr. Tsarnaev was linked to the Boston Marathon bombings, his associates
in Kizlyar had various reactions. Mr. Zakaryayev recalled wondering whether
he had slid back into his old reverence for Mr. Awlaki. "I thought, he had
those views, maybe he did it," he said. But Mr. Ibadamov is like an
overwhelming number of young people in Dagestan, where trust in law
enforcement is close to zero: he believes Mr. Tsarnaev was framed.
In another reaction that is nearly universal here, he also expressed
frustration at the attention that has been given to the attack and its
victims. "What happened in Boston - we don't support that," he said. "Three
people died. But on that same day, 100 people were killed in bombing in
Syria. We say, is the blood of Syrians so meaningless for world society, and
is the blood of Americans so important?"
==========================================
(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this
message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to
these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed
within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with
"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.
The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The
Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain
permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials
if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria
for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies
as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four
criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is
determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not
substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use
copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS
PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment