Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s nonchalant attitude in the wake of Monday’s attack was witnessed on his Twitter page.
At 5 p.m. on Monday – just hours after he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were caught on surveillance footage coolly walking away from the bomb site – he tweeted: “Ain’t no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people.”
The next day Dzhokhar Tsarnaev replied to a tweet claiming one of the fatalities in the bombings was a woman whose fiancé was proposing to her.
“Fake story” he wrote on the social media website.
The same day the suspect added: “I’m a stress free kind of guy.”
According to the page, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a 9/11 denier and in a chilling post in August wrote: “Boston marathon isn’t a good place to smoke tho.”
The account, confirmed to friends to belong to the terror suspect, makes for haunting reading.
Just months before the tweet Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said he was changing majors to try and become a nurse and talked about his work “saving lives” as a Harvard lifeguard.
“I didn’t become a lifeguard just to chill and get paid, I do it for the people, saving brings me joy,” he wrote on May 29.
However, it has emerged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sacked last summer after he suddenly stopped turning up for shifts, according to a Buzzfeed report.
The Chechen has been described by friends as a “careful and jovial” student, who has lived in the US for a decade and partied “like a normal American kid” – painting a conflicting picture of a man now accused of terrorism.
It appears Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became increasingly radicalized by his older brother Tamerlan with whom he is said to have carried out the deadly attack at Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 180.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s cousin, Zaur, told the Boston Globe that he “used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamerlan was up to no good” while Tamerlan’s boxing coach said the younger brother would watch him train, “he idolized him”, according to the Boston Herald.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Twitter account portrays two contrasting pictures and hints at a man who suddenly changed sometime last year.
Many of his posts are innocuous references to pop culture, college and women.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev posts hip hop lyrics, talks about his love for TV show Breaking Bad and chats to college friends.
But others are serious and appear to suggests of events to come.
In 2012, April 21, he wrote in Russian: “I will perish young.”
Last month Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted: “Never underestimate the rebel with a cause.”
Last year, in a July 17 post at 10.45 a.m., he wrote: “3rd zombie apocalypse dream in a span of like 2 weeks, I’m no golden boy but maybe, just maybe we should be expecting something soon, tbc..”
This was the same day his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is believed to have returned to the US after a mysterious six month absence.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also made plain his feelings on 9/11.
He also posted: “Idk [I don’t know] why it’s hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job, I mean I guess f*** the facts y’all are some real #patriots #gethip.”
Other post reads: “September 10th baby, you know what tomorrow is. Party at my house! #thingsyoudontyellwhenenteringaroom.”
Reports yesterday suggested Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had convinced his mother too.
A former client of Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the Huffington Post the mother of the bombers was also a denier.
Alyssa Kilzner said: “It’s real. She said, <<My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet>>.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also posted pictures of himself in Times Square and wrote about visiting New York in November.
Another particularly hateful comment reads: “You guys know that the suicide rate for active duty american soldiers is at an all time high for 2012, a suicide a day, whats the #problem?”
The terror suspect also wrote: “A decade in America already, I want out.”
The context of the Boston Marathon message is not known as the recipient’s account and responses are locked and therefore private.
But half the conversation can be seen on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ‘s site.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was attending the University of Massachusetts after graduating from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, former high school of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
Up until Monday, family and friends said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appeared to be a party-loving guy, who was never a troublemaker and appeared grateful to America for taking in his family.
His father described him as a “true angel” yesterday as news emerged his two sons were terror suspects wanted for the atrocious attack on Boston on Monday.
Anzor Tsarnaev spoke with The Associated Press by telephone from the Russian city of Makhachkala.
“My son is a true angel,” he said.
“Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the US. He is such an intelligent boy.”
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were legal permanent residents of the US who hailed from Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency stemming from separatist wars.
But the two brothers took to their adoptive country very differently.
It appears Tamerlan Tsarnaev became radicalized in recent months. Despite his many years here, he said he had “one single American friend”.
Five months ago, Tamerlan Tsarnaev created a YouTube playlist dedicated to terrorism. Named simply “Terrorists”, it included a pair of videos, which are now no longer available.
Among the songs was one called I will dedicate my life to Jihad.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev also featured videos recorded by recent converts to Islam.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the other hand, who grew up in the US from a much younger age, seemed to have entirely immersed himself in American life.
High school friends expressed their shock that he would have anything to do with terrorism.
One friend told CNN: “He is a normal kid, he parties, he sometimes smokes – if you know what I mean. He was as American as I am – he was born and raised here. This kid was a walking angel.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgyzstan after the family fled Chechnya. The family, which also included two daughters, Bella and Amina, had refugee status.
Both sons had immense pride in their “home country” with Dzhokhar describing himself as Chechen and speaking the language.
The family moved around Eastern Europe with their young family.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went to a school in Makhachkala, the capital city of the Republic of Dagestan, between 1999-2001.
His former teachers at his first school described him as a “normal child” yesterday.
“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.”
In high school Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a young wrestling star – a member of the team for three years and captain for two.
Sanjaya Lamichhame, a team-mate, refused to speak against his friend and said: “He always motivated me. He was a very nice guy. I knew him for four or five years.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also showed intellectual promise – winning a scholarship of $2,500 from the city of Cambridge.
His page on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, shows pictures of him with friends and posing for the camera.
On that site Dzhokhar Tsarnaev mentions his interest in Islam but makes no suggestion he was radicalized.
It has now been overrun with people asking him how he could have committed the bombing, and wishing him dead.
The first brush with police for the family appears to been have made in June 2012, when the boys’ mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was arrested for stealing $1,624 in clothes from Lord and Taylor.
His high school friend Eric Mercado said there was only one time he remembered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev discussing terrorism.
“A friend of mine remembered a conversation he had had with Dzhokhar. It was along the lines of when justified, terrorism is not necessarily a bad thing.”
“It was a red flag but people say things all the time and you don’t take it out of context. You don’t believe someone’s going to be a terrorist because of these conversations,” he said.
Eric Mercado said friends were in disbelief when they identified Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from FBI pictures by his trademark backwards white cap.
