American tragedy of the Chechens Tsarnaev

Who are the Tsarnaev brothers, where they came from and why Boston blew up

The 19-year-old Johar Tsarnaev, suspected of organizing explosions in Boston on the evening on Friday, came to his senses and gives evidence. So far in writing: he cannot speak because of the wound to his neck. The hunt for it continued for almost a day: throughout Friday April 19, the suburbs of the 600,000th Boston-Newton, Wetertown and Cambridge-became an arena of one of the largest anti-terrorism operations in modern US history. The New Times talked with people on both sides of the ocean

Police House behind the house is combed by Wetertown in search of Johar Tsarnaev

The police, blocking dozens of quarters, caught the 19-year-old Chechen Johar Tsarnaev-one of the main suspects in organizing the explosions on April 15 at the finish of the Boston Marathon. On the day when three died and were injured by 178 people, he wrote on his Twitter: “There is no love in the city center. Take care of yourself. "

Another suspect, Johar's older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed during a shootout the day before on the eve of the 18th: 15 police officers were injured in a shootout. “They called us from the police and told us not to leave the house,” said the New Times in the day of the 19th, a resident of Newton Linda Rakoff, “all the stores are closed, transport does not work, they told me not to go to work, those who came to bus stops, asked to go home. We are still nothing in Newton, and in Watertaun everyone is terribly afraid: they say that Johar is armed, that there may be more bombs. The police instructed not to open the door to anyone and a little that - to call in 911. "

Family

The younger Tsarnaev studied at Cambridge Ringe & Latin School (school for high school students): teachers speak of him as a very good student - played basketball, was engaged in struggle. The elder, Tamerlana, in the same Boston was accepted at the Bunker Hill Community Colledge engineering faculty, was actively engaged in boxing and even represented new England in the heavy weight category at the National Golden Gloves championship (National Golden Gloves). He had a girl, according to half the Italian, half the Portuguese, who accepted Islam-in 2009 Tamerlan after a too aggressive clarification of relations with her fell into the police. But where did they come from and how did they get into the USA? According to the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) of Kyrgyzstan, the Tsarnaev family lived in the city of Tokmok (Chuysk region in the north of the republic), from where she went to permanent residence in Dagestan 12 years ago and emigrated to the United States from there.

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"An ordinary emigrant family, normal, adequate, very hospitable, father repaired cars in Boston"

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The father of the brothers Tamerlana and Johar Anzor Tsarnaev was from the family of Chechens deported by order of Stalin during the war, in 1944, the famous Chechen surgeon Hasan Bayev, familiar with the Tsarnaev family, told The New Times: “Anzor himself was born and lived in Kyrgyzstan, in Chechnya never visited. We left Kyrgyzstan-because in the early 2000s there was already interethnic tension ... The mother of the Tsarnaev brothers-Zubeidat-was originally from Dagestan, so they often went there to her parents ... "Now the parents of the Tsarnaev brothers-in Makhachkala, for relatives. They were waiting here for the holidays and the younger, Johar-their father said about this in an interview with Interfax-South . Whether the Tsarnaevs returned to Dagestan to Dagestan or are temporarily there-Bayev was difficult to answer. “An ordinary emigrant family, normal, adequate, very hospitable, my father repaired cars in Boston,” the doctor added. Meanwhile, according to the police department of the city of Nitika (Massachusetts, a town of 30 km from Boston), the Tsarnaev Zadatat in June 2012 was arrested for the theft of clothes in the Lord & Taylor store for more than $ 1.5 thousand.

A person who introduced himself as a “non-Russian Muslim from the far abroad”, who met in 2004 with the Tsarnaev family, also called the editorial office of the magazine. According to him, "Anzor worked in Russia in law enforcement and was almost a prosecutor, and opened a car repair workshop in Boston." The interlocutor of the magazine to the question: how Tsarnaevs got to America, confidently stated: “They came to the States with two sons and a daughter from Ukraine - lived there in the city of Sumy.” However, there is another version: in the USA, the family came from Turkey. “This is more like the truth,” the representative of the Chechen diaspora in Moscow said on the condition of anonymity. -In the early 2000s, thousands of Chechens left the destroyed Chechnya and Dagestan to Ankara and Istanbul, asked for refugee status in US diplomatic municipalities, and then entered America with official refugees. Moreover, the Dagestan Chechens have even more reasons to achieve refugees status - after the famous campaign of Basayev, the Avars (in Dagestan) hated them. ”

“Tsarnaeva is not a common surname in Chechnya, it is mainly worn by Chechens-Akinites living mainly in Dagestan (“ King ”-Father Consciously),” explained the New Times Abdullah Duduev, chef of the independent Caucasian journal Dosh. “And many Chechens gave the name Johar to their sons in the early 90s, when Johar Dudaev was popular.” “There are no influential clans with the surname Tsarnaev,” Abdulla Duduev summed up.

Flowers on Boston Boylston Street in memory of the victims of the attack on April 15

Islam

In the United States, the Tsarnaev family, according to the already mentioned interlocutor of the magazine from the Far Abroad, "although she was proud of her Chechen roots and Islam, in fact did not know about Islam and did not observe the rites." However, the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers were seriously interested in the Islamic ideology, there is no doubt. As a user of the social network VKontakte, Johar Tsarnaev was registered in several groups associated with Islam. In the “Interesting Pages” section in his VKontakte profile we read: 1) Salamworld: My religion is Islam. 2) Islam. Muslims. Islam.

In addition, it consists in the group: “Chechen's, Chechnya. All about the Chechen Republic. " Also, according to the profile, the main thing for Johar was “Islam, career and money”.

The last time Tsarnaev entered the VKontakte page at 5.04 Moscow time on Friday, April 19, when he was already hunting. When The New Times entered his page in the middle of Friday Moscow time (in the USA it was an early morning), he had more than 40 friends there, one of them left, one of them - Diyas Kadyrbaev - is studying at the Massachusetts Technological Institute, where the police evacuated all students in search of the “third suspect in the organization of explosions” ...

The deceased Tamerlan Tsarnaev, apparently, belongs to the personal page on YouTube - quite distinct Islamist content.

Motives

“The motives of the act of brothers (Tsarnaev) are still unknown, but the little that is placed on YouTube suggests that Islam was one of the factors,” agrees the employee of the Davis Center for the Study of Russia and Eurasia University Mark Kramer. - And if they (Tsarnaeva) were really guided by extremist goals, then this, of course, gives the Russian authorities a lot of reasons to say: “We told you” - in relation to other Chechens who received asylum in the USA and the UK, especially Ahmed Zakaev / ... / Of course, such arguments are hypocritical and selfish, but I suspect that they will receive a bigger one. support. Obviously, the large Chechen diasporas in Germany, Austria, Turkey and Azerbaijan will become even deeper into themselves. The same thing will happen in the States, where the community of Chechen refugees is much more small. The only thing I can say with confidence: the Chechens were first involved in a terrorist conspiracy in North America. Chechen terrorists rarely act outside Russia. Several terrorist attacks or attempts of this kind took place in Turkey, one conspiracy was discovered 10 years ago in France, and one more later - in Belgium. That's all. " “What happened is an absolute shock for me and all my friends,” the journalist Abdullah Duduev laments. - Now all this (Boston events) are discussing: they send to each other SS, calling. Over the past 15 years, Chechens are already considered the culprits of all troubles in Russia, it now turned out that the Chechens are doing something in America. If a representative of a different nationality did this, the collective responsibility to the nation would not have spread. But when it comes to the Chechens, as in the time and Jews, the cones begin to fly to everyone. It is very sad and painful for us. There is a feeling of complete despair. ”

"Boston lost innocence"

Maxim Schraer, writer, literary critic, professor of Boston College (by phone):

There were never terrorist attacks in Boston, it has always been a calm city. And then everything somehow immediately fell upon us. President Obama arrived on April 17 in Boston for the interfaith service of the memory of the victims of the marathon, and just the same morning the plant exploded in Texas. The general sensation of some apocalyptic state ... People on the streets are excited faces, any conversation in one way or another comes down to the topic of the explosion, investigation, and the personalities of terrorists. However, I still have not heard a single accusation against the police, president or government.

I live in America for 26 years, of which 18 are in Boston. I live on the very street on which the marathon passes every year - Beacon Street. And my parents live on the same street. We are observing the marathon from the balcony. In a sense, this marathon is the coordinate of my life, the life of my relatives, and indeed the whole city: it is difficult in Boston not to find a person whose acquaintances would not take part in the marathon. The parents of classmates of my daughters took part in the marathon; Cantor from our synagogue is also a marathon.

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From the holiday, the city and the street instantly switched to martial law. The military began to run everywhere, screaming to people so that they would not walk the streets

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On April 15, in the morning, our daughters, 5 and 7 years old, woke up with the thought of trading on the street prepared by a house with a lemonade. My wife and I agreed. He and the nanny, starting from 11 o’clock, were already standing right by the side of the road. Imagine the glee of the crowd, a holiday, a mood that is very consistent with Boston in general, because it is an old city, university, cultural and scientific, sports. In addition, this was the first day of school holidays, so there were a huge number of children among the fans.

Somewhere at 10.30, leaders ran past us-these are supermarats, champions. Then the middle part of the marathon runs behind them, these are thousands of runners, because there were more than 25 thousand participants in the marathon. Our house is two miles from the finish tape (3.2 km). And somewhere at 3 o’clock in the afternoon-I’m in my apartment on the third floor, the children stand below with the nanny, and suddenly something strange happens, you begin to feel like a filmmeller spectator. But only this was not in the cinema. Suddenly the street begins to empty. First, thousands of people run, a huge number of fans, and suddenly, suddenly - where did they all go? Delay? Is the marathon ended? No, it cannot be, it all ends usually by four hours. And then a policeman approaches our nanny, the girls are approaching the girls. And not just a city policeman, but a representative of the military police. And in such a surprised voice he says, they say, throw the semolina and rather home. And then he whispered to the nanny that there was an explosion. They threw everything there, ran into the entrance of the house. There was already information on the Internet that two explosions with a gap of twenty seconds occurred at the finish. But the most amazing thing - this really acted on me - that from the holiday the city and the street instantly switched to martial law. The military suddenly began to run everywhere, screaming to people so that they did not walk the streets, the streets themselves were blocked, they put metal partitions on each corner, everywhere dozens of cars with sirens - ambulances, firefighters, police officers.

For the first time I felt what a strong Facebook thing - instantly everyone began to notify each other about what was happening, it would not be possible to do without it. The city was indeed numb, this is not an exaggeration.

My wife, on the way from work from the hospital, where the wounded were driving at that time, was forced to throw a car at some point and walk, the youngest daughter had a violin, and we could not get to the teacher. And the eldest had a piano lesson, and we walked there on foot, so I watched how some buses with darkened windows were driving in one direction, cars with sirens. It seemed that they were preparing for the worst. But by 8.30 pm, all the cordons were removed, life began to return into normal.

Now dozens of wounded are still in hospitals. It seems that there was a war in the city. But most importantly, there is a feeling that Boston has lost innocence. Probably, he will never be the same as before - a quiet, calm place, rather European than the American one.

As the events around the Tsarnaev brothers will say on Russian-American relations-The New Times asked the experts:
Vyacheslav Nikonov, President of the Politics Foundation:

Bad they will say. When I saw messages about Boston, I immediately thought that a “Chechen trace” would probably appear here. No wonder Kadyrov was introduced to the Magnitsky list*.
Igor Bunin, General Director of the Center for Political Technology:
“The most significant one, Russia immediately went to meet the United States and provided it with moral support. I pay attention to the reaction of Putin, who immediately expressed condolences and, having arrived at the meeting of American and Russian hockey players, arranged a minute of silence. This resembles the situation on September 11, 2001 - then Putin was one of the first to support the United States in the fight against terrorism. And now he, using the same topic, is trying to restore relations with the United States. True, then there was an opportunity to provide the United States for some real help related to the Afghan "North Alliance" (led by Ahmad Shah Masud.-The New Times), with which our FSB had close ties ...
Now it is more difficult to offer help, since it is not clear what it should be expressed in. Most likely, the suspects are associated with al-Qaeda. And the fact that they came out of the Russian hinterland has practically no significance. The largest terrorist Osama Bin Laden, for example, left Saudi Arabia, but after that the United States did not break off relations with Saudi Arabia.
Dmitry Train, Director of the Moscow Center of Carnegie:
I do not think that the relations of the United States and Russia will change a lot. And in Russia there are very powerful circles that promote anti -Americanism, and in the USA there are those who reject the legitimacy of the current Russian government.
In America, public opinion for the most part does not consider what we call “Chechen or North Caucasian terrorism” as a problem of international terrorism. When they talk about international terrorism, they talk about September 11, 2001 in New York, on July 7, 2005 in London, March 11, 2004 in Madrid, but they do not say that it took place in Moscow and other cities of Russia, for example, houses and terrorist attacks in the subway, they consider this not as an international, but as a purely Russian internal issue. The Russian leadership strives to ensure that terrorists acting on Russian territory are also qualified as international terrorists in the West.
So there are many problems, and they will not be resolved quickly.

Photos: Reuters