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Bella Tsarnaeva, sister of Boston Marathon bombings suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, faces drugs charge in New Jersey.
Bella Tsarnaeva, 24, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to possession of ma****ana with intent to distribute.
She was arrested in December 2012 after police responded to her Fairview home on a domestic violence report and found ma****ana, according to court papers. Authorities said they had first found her live-in boyfriend, Ahmad Khalil, at the apartment, which they searched after smelling marijuana.
Both Bella Tsarnaeva and Ahmad Khalil were indicted on April 10 with possession of ma****ana with intent to distribute.
They declined to comment on Tuesday after their arraignment in Superior Court, where their attorneys entered not-guilty pleas on their behalves.
Bella Tsarnaeva’s attorney, Mario Blanch, said he has applied for her to be admitted into a pretrial intervention program, a form of probation that allows certain defendants to resolve their cases without a criminal record.
Bella Tsarnaeva, sister of Boston Marathon bombings suspects faces drug charges in New Jersey
Bella Tsarnaeva later left the building, her head wrapped in Ahmad Khalil’s shirt to shield her from a photographer. Mario Blanch said Bella Tsarnaeva did not want to be photographed because people are already recognizing her on the streets and that she has even received death threats for what her brothers are accused of doing.
“She is a young woman, 24 years old, and through no fault of her own, she has been thrust into a public spotlight,” said her attorney Mario Blanch to North Jersey.com.
“This has been a huge tragedy for this country, and it has also been a huge tragedy for my client.”
The investigation extended into North Jersey within a few days after the Boston Marathon bombing when federal agents showed up at the West New York home of another sister, 22-year-old Ailina Tsarnaeva. The agents interviewed the woman for several hours and left with computers, cell phones and plastic bags full of items. West New York police later said the woman was cooperating with authorities.
Meanwhile, lawyers for her brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are set to blame the “overpowering influence” of elder brother Tamerlan, said Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties and defense attorney.
According to Harvey Silvergate, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers will cite Tamerlan as being “an embittered and dangerous character, and it is well known that older siblings have tremendous power over younger siblings”.
One of the teenage bombers attorney is Judy Clarke, who represented “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and 1996 Atlanta Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph – in both cases using mental health as a defense.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva that “everything will be fine” in their first telephone call since his arrest in the Boston Marathon bombings case as he recuperates at a Massachusetts prison hospital.
According to Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who spoke to her son yesterday from Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s Dagestan region, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said: “I am absolutely fine, my wounds are healing. Everything is in God’s hands. Be patient. Everything will be fine.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, stands accused of carrying out the April 15th attack in Boston, which killed three people and injured at least 260 along with his brother Tamerlan, who was killed following a brutal shootout with police on April 19th in the Watertown suburb of the city.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva had their first phone call since his arrest
The teenage terror suspect was arrested after a 36 hour multi-agency manhunt and is currently being held at Devens Federal medical center as he recovers from gunshot wounds, including one to the neck.
“Mentally he is normal but the child is shocked,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said to Bloomberg.
“It was really hard to hear him and for him to hear me. The conversation was very quiet. It was my child, I know he is locked up like a dog, like an animal.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the news agency that the conversation she had with her son lasted six minutes and that she is promised one a month with him.
This comes as the sister of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev faces a drugs charge in New Jersey.
Investigators of Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev case say that he travelled to the Russian republic of Dagestan in 2012 with the intent of joining a radical Islamist group, but he never followed through with his plan.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was shot dead during a police gun battle on April 19 after officials claim he and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokahr, had set off two homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
In 202, officials say Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whom they described as a “typical lone wolf”, went to Dagestan after becoming radicalized in the US.
While staying abroad, however, Tamerlan Tsarnaev did not join the ranks of an international terror group, and it appears that the two brothers were acting of their own accord when they set off the deadly explosions, officials close to the matter told ABC News.
Investigators also found no manifesto written by Tamerlan Tamerlan while he was staying in Dagestan, which would have provided a clear motive for the attacks.
Similarly, no evidence was found so far to suggest that Tamerlan Tsarnaev reached out to Islamist leaders on his earlier trips to Chechnya to visit his father’s relatives.
During his recent visit to Dagestan, where his parents currently reside, Tamerlan Tsarnaev did make contact with Mahmud Mansur Nidal, who has been suspected of having militant ties, according to officials.
The two were frequently seen at a Salafist mosque in the capital of Makhachkala, which is popular among insurgents.
However, while Mahmud Mansur Nidal eventually ended up joining a radical Islamist organization in the southern Russian region, Tamerlan Tsarnaev did not follow him and later returned to the U.S.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev travelled to Dagestan in 2012 with the intent of joining a radical Islamist group, but he never followed through with his plan
Mahmud Mansur Nidal, a man who was both Palestinian and Kumyk, was killed in May 2012 after refusing to give himself up to security forces that had surrounded a house in Makhachkala, according to official police records.
An FBI probe has revealed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had social networking ties with Muslim convert William Plotnikov, a Russian national from Canada, which brought Tsarnaev to the attention of Russian security services for the first time in late 2010.
William Plotnikov had been detained in Dagestan in December 2010 on suspicion of having ties to the militants and during his interrogation was forced to hand over a list of social networking friends from the U.S. and Canada who like him had once lived in Russia, Novaya Gazeta reported.
William Plotnikov was among seven suspected militants killed on July 14 during a standoff with police in the Dagestani village of Utamysh, according to the official police record.
After William Plotnikov’s death, Russian security agents lost track of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and went to see his father in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, who told them that his son had returned to the U.S., Novaya Gazeta said.
The Russians later determined that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had flown to Moscow on July 16 and to the U.S. the following day, the newspaper said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived in New York on July 17.
Investigators also looked into Tamerlan Tsaranev’s relationship with a distant cousin with ties to extremists group, who is suspected of playing a role in the 26-year-old former boxer’s radicalization.
Magomed Kartashov is founder and leader of a group called The Union of the Just which reportedly promotes the application of Islamic Sharia law and has protested against the U.S.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev is said to have met Magomed Kartashov for the first time in Dagestan. Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told TIME Magazine that the two kinsmen “became very close”.
The Union of the Just publicly renounces violence, but several of its members have ties to militants.
A lawyer for Magomed Kartashov confirmed to ABC News that Russian security agents recently interviewed her client about his links to Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Magomed Kartashov admits that the two were close but insists that it was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who tried to “pull him into extremism”.
He is currently in jail on charges of resisting police after waving an Islamists flag during a wedding procession. His lawyer expects he will remain there for at least two more months.
Magomed Magomedov, another member of Union for the Just, told ABC News that he saw Tamerlan Tsarnaev on several occasions at the Makhachkala mosque, but the American transplant appeared out of place.
“He was sticking out, it was obvious he is not local. He liked to draw attention with his expensive and fancy clothes. His haircut was something no one has seen before,” he said.
According to some accounts, Tamerlan Tsarnaev would put on airs by claiming that he knew more about Islam than he actually did. In conversations with other congregants, he would often recite things he had picked up online in a bid to impress the locals, who grew annoyed with him.
But according to officials, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not as strict a practitioner of Islam as he appeared to be.
According to one investigator, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, like his younger brother Dzhokhar, would often indulge in mar***ana while living in Massachusetts, spending hours high.
The FBI is to meet with nearly a dozen people who had known Tamerlan Tsarnaev, including relatives, childhood friends and acquaintances from the mosque, hoping to shed light on the events that led to the bombings.
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Abdul-Baki Todashev, father of a Chechen immigrant Ibragim Todashev, who was shot dead by an FBI agent while being questioned about his ties to Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, said Thursday that he regrets allowing his son to go to the U.S.
Ibragim Todashev, 27, was a mixed martial arts fighter who had trained with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston, and his father said they had bonded because of their shared interests and heritage as Chechens from southern Russia.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police days after the April 15 terrorist attack.
Ibragim Todashev was killed Wednesday after an altercation with an FBI agent during a meeting with the agent and two Massachusetts state troopers at his home in central Florida. Law enforcement officers say that during the meeting, he had implicated himself in an unsolved 2011 triple murder.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said he was worried that with his son was dead, the FBI could now pin any crime on him.
“Out of fear of the lawlessness in Chechnya, I sent him to the U.S., because it seemed like the safest country at the time,” the distraught father told the Associated Press.
“Now I’m thinking about how to bring home his body. As it turns out I sent him to his death.”
Abdul-Baki Todashev said his son Ibragim, who has a previous arrest for aggravated battery after he left a man unconscious following a fight over a park spot, is “not capable” of killing anyone.
“There is a clear picture emerging that this is all fabricated,” Abdul-Baki Todashev told the Boston Globe.
“They killed my son and then they made up a reason to explain it.”
Friends and family members of the 2011 murder victims reacted to news of Ibragim Todashev’s alleged confession on social media.
On a Facebook memorial for victim Raphael Teken, the moderator of the page wrote: “Whether we ever know exactly what happened, there is one thing we surely know and that is that Rafi deserved a much better fate.
“He was funny, kind, joyful and generous.
“All of us that knew him knew [his death] couldn’t have been about anything he did, but are now horrified by what it may have been about.”
Facebook user Tony Porter wrote: “I’m disappointed that we will never really get to experience true justice for our friend or know the reasons for what happened despite the fact that both alleged suspects are now deceased.
“I don’t know how you are supposed to feel when your friend’s killer gets killed, but I don’t feel <<relieved>> like I thought I would.”
Moderators of a Facebook memorial for victim Erik Weissman wrote: “Hoping for some closure” and posted a photo of him with the caption: “Forever young, forever beautiful, forever in our hearts.”
Ibragim Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent while being questioned about his ties to Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev
A friend who said he went to high school with Erik Weissman commented: “That playful grin is the Erik that will live on in my memory… Let’s hope [this] represents at least a small step towards some kind of <<closure>> – if that even exits – for his nearest and dearest.”
Ibragim Todashev’s estranged wife, Reniya Manukyan, denied her husband’s alleged involvement in the 2011 triple murder, but she noted that he did travel back to Boston in the summer of that year.
He “had nothing to hide”, she told ABC News.
“He wasn’t involved. So he was not even nervous [to talk with the FBI].”
Reniya Manukyan and her husband separated in November. She said they lived in Atlanta before moving to Orlando in late 2011.
She also said that agents had questioned her several times and even stopped her at the airport when she returned from a trip to Chechnya several weeks after the Boston bombings.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said his son – the second of 12 children – was at university when he got an opportunity to go to the U.S. to study English about five or six years ago. He said he later agreed to his son’s request to remain in the U.S. “because it seemed like the safest country”.
Chechnya has been ravaged by two wars between separatist fighters and Russian federal troops since 1994, and remains troubled by periodic outbreaks of violence. The family’s red-brick house on the outskirts of Grozny, the Chechen capital, still bears the marks of shrapnel.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said his son gave up martial arts because of an injury and later held a number of jobs, including as a driver at a retirement home, before moving to Florida within the last year. The father said Ibragim had planned to come to Chechnya this week to visit his extended family, but was asked by the FBI to delay his trip.
Abdul-Baki Todashev said he had learned of his son’s death from a phone call from one of his son’s friends, who also had been questioned by the FBI. He said the friend, whom he didn’t name, told him that both of them had been pressured to confess to the murders, but that they were innocent.
The FBI gave no details on why it was interested in Ibragim Todashev except to say that he was being questioned as part of the Boston investigation. However, two officials briefed on the investigation said he had implicated himself as having been involved in a 2011 triple murder in a Boston suburb; investigators now suspect that Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been involved in the unsolved crime.
Law enforcement officials believe, partly based on Ibragim Todashev’s alleged confession, that Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev carried out the 2011 killings after a drug deal turned violent. The suspects didn’t want the three victims to be able to identify them, so they s**t their throats, sources told NBC.
Authorities had gone to Ibragim Todashev’s home late Tuesday with evidence suggesting that Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, were involved in the 2011 killings, according to reports.
No suspects had been arrested in that case, in which three men were found in an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts on the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks with their throats cut and marijuana covering their bodies.
Massachusetts investigators had reported earlier this month that they were uncovering “mounting evidence” that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, were involved in the sl**ing. One of the victims, Brendan Mess, was a close friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s.
Authorities said they have no reason to believe that Ibragim Todashev had any involvement in the Boston Marathon bombings.
The FBI has been investigating Ibragim Todashev for the last month, questioning him several times regarding his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police in a shootout following the deadly April 15 marathon bombings. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has been charged in connection with the bombings and is being held at a prison medical center outside Boston.
Khusen Taramov, a friend of Ibragim Todashev’s, confirmed that Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev knew each other. He said they had been in contact via phone or Skype about a week before the bombings.
Ibragim Todashev was arrested in an unrelated incident on May 4 for aggravated battery after he left a man unconscious in the parking lot of a shopping mall.
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Chechen Ibragim Todashev has been shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando, Florida, early Wednesday during questioning related to the Boston Marathon bombings.
The shooting happened just after midnight Wednesday at 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev’s apartment complex near Universal studios, FBI Special Agent Dave Couvertier confirmed.
“The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties,” Dave Couvertier said.
“We do not have any further details at this time. We expect to have more information later this morning.”
An FBI post-shooting incident review team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C. and is expected to arrive in Orlando within 24 hours, he said.
Former FBI assistant director John Miller, who now works for CBS News, said the FBI was trying to question Ibragim Todashev at his apartment over his ties to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev when “something went wrong”.
Chechen Ibragim Todashev has been shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando
The suspect reportedly attacked the agent, who then fired his weapon and killed Ibragim Todashev.
The FBI had questioned Ibragim Todashev in the past regarding his ties to 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police in a shootout following the April 15 bombings. His younger brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, has been charged in connection with the bombings and is being held at a prison medical center outside Boston.
Khusen Taramov, a friend of Ibragim Todashev, confirmed that he knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev and had been in contact with him via phone or Skype about a week before the bombings.
In an interview with Orlando television station WESH, he said that the two met while Ibragim Todashev was living in Boston because they were both involved in mixed martial arts and boxing.
Khusen Taramov says the FBI has been following him and Ibragim Todashev since the bombings. He said that they were both being interviewed by agents late Monday night.
He claims his friend is innocent and that he has been targeted by authorities because he is a Muslim.
“He was just a Muslim, that was his mistake, I guess,” Khusen Taramov, also a Muslim, told WESH.
Shortly before the shooting, Ibragim Todashev “had a bad feeling. He felt there’s going to be a set-up against him,” he said.
Ibragim Todashev gave him phone numbers for his mother and father late Monday just in case he got “locked up”.
“We had a feeling that a worse-case scenario, that something like [a shooting] is going to happen,” Khusn Taramiv told the television station.
In an unrelated incident, Ibragim Todashev was arrested May 5 for aggravated battery following a fight in a parking lot.
The nurses who treated Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have told how they could not stop themselves from soothing him with the words: “I am really sorry, hon.”
Medical staff said that just like any other patient they were reflexively affectionate to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev they “did not see as a terrorist”.
Torn by a mixture of emotions, they made a pact to be unemotional around him as they struggled to reconcile their professional obligations with personal disgust.
Interviews with the nurse show how hard it was to treat somebody who has been accused of being behind the bombings that went off during the Boston Marathon last month.
The explosions left three dead and more than 265 injured, some of whom were taken to the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center where 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ended up too after being caught in a shootout with police that killed his brother 26-year-old Tamerlan.
There the nurses found their requirement to treat anybody regardless of their background was tested to the absolute limit.
Speaking to the Boston Globe, seven of the women spoke about caring for him but did not want to give their full names for fear of a backlash from the community.
While moving Dzhokhar Tsarnaev one day a nurse called Irene found herself saying: “I am really sorry, hon.”
She and another nurse called Marie agreed to tell each other if they were using terms of endearment towards him by accident.
The nurses who treated Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have told how they could not stop themselves from soothing him
Marie said: “You see a hurt 19-year-old and you can’t help but feel sorry for him.”
She added that she would “not be upset if he (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) got the death penalty”.
Marie said: “There is no way to reconcile the two different feelings.”
The night Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was brought in would have been particularly vexing for Beth Israel as doctors were still looking after 24 bombing victims, some of whom were on the same floor as the suspect.
Victims’ families had to walk past an area with armed guards where the man who allegedly maimed their relatives was being held, just so they could see their loved ones.
Nurse Julie Benbenishty, director of trauma at the hospital, said: “Many of the support staff, the cleaners, and families of other patients will say: <<Why are you giving him pain medication?>>
“They might be angry at us for turning him and washing him and for doing what we are really supposed to do.
“After about a half-hour, I don’t see him as a terrorist anymore.”
As the night went on medics were reminded of their obligations under the Hippocratic Oath, and FBI investigators told them: “You need to keep this person alive. We need information. We need justice.”
A 29-year-old nurse said that when she was unsure if she could treat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, her husband told her: “You have to do it. You have to do it so we can get answers.”
Michele, 29, a nurse who was one of those who cared for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, said that when she was in the room with him he was “just a patient”.
She said: “You’re here to… make sure they’re feeling better.
“When you step away, you take it in. I am compassionate, that’s what we do. But should I be?
“The rest of the world hates him right now. The emotions are like one big salad, all tossed around.”
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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev chose to write a note confessing his connection to the Boston Marathon bombings explaining why he and his brother Tamerlan made the two pressure cooker bombs as he thought he was dying when he was hiding out in a boat.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, found a pen in the boat but no paper so it was revealed today that he wrote his message on an interior wall of David Henneberry’s boat that he used as shelter in Watertown.
Law enforcement sources told CBS that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote that he “does not mourn” the death of his older brother Tamerlan because he is a martyr living in “paradise” and that he expected to join him there soon.
The note is a critical piece of evidence for police as it reiterates what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said to them in the hospital after his arrest.
Aside from simply confirming his other statements, it could serve as back up for the eventual legal case against him because the reported confession to police came before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was read his Miranda rights informing him of his right to remain silent.
After they were read, the suspect reportedly stopped talking to police, but now the note will serve as a handwritten confession.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev found a pen in the boat but no paper and he wrote his message on an interior wall of David Henneberry’s boat that he used as shelter in Watertown
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote that the bombings were retribution for the various American crimes against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He equated the three people who were killed in the marathon bombings and the more than 250 others who were injured to “collateral damage” like the thousands of innocent Muslim victims of American wars across the globe.
“When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly wrote.
CBS reporter John Miller pointed out that the note is just the latest piece of evidence that police are using in developing their theory that the Chechen brothers worked alone and were self-radicalized rather than being the “soldiers” for a larger group.
Investigators are still working to determine who else- if anyone- knew about the attack before it happened.
While the note is undoubtedly a boost for the state’s case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is now being held in the medical center of an area prison, it is hardly cut and dry.
Because police fired hundreds of bullets at the boat during their attempt to capture Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the note is riddled with bullet holes.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and the note will certainly be used in the case against him.
A startling number of teen girls have admitted to having a schoolgirl crush on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, proclaiming their love for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect on social media.
It’s a disturbing trend on sites like Twitter and Facebook, where girls have admitted to finding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attractive, and herald him in the ranks of Justin Bieber and One Direction singer Harry Styles.
One Twitter user, a waitress who goes by the name Keepitblunted, has said she is looking to get a tattoo of a Dzhokhar Tsarnaev quote.
“If you have the knowledge and the inspiration all that’s left is to take action.”
The quote was tweeted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 8, a week before the Boston Marathon bombings.
She has since gone back on her promise, posting that she has decided to hold off “out of respect of my family’s wishes”.
But the young woman, named Alisha, told the New York Post that she’s not among the group of women who are interested in the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev because she’s in love with him.
She told the paper: “Somebody needs to stand up for him, and not the little high-school girls who just think he’s cute.”
The FreeJahar97 Twitter account was created on April 25 – 10 days after the double bombing.
The first tweet reads: “any other beliebers out there who want to see Jahar freed and believe he is innocent? feel like i’m all alone here.. #freejahar.”
Another says she is considering becoming a Muslim to better related to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“I know I didn’t know Jahar and I shouldn’t be saying this but… I miss Jahar… Is that weird? Don’t think I’m weird. I just miss him.”
Facebook group Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent sprung up shortly after the bombings and has more than 8,000 followers
Tsarnaev5ever tweeted: “Jahar is gonna go crazy in that cell alone with just a book… I wanna send money to him… Anyone have the address?”
“Poor Jahar… He’s only 19. ONLY 19… No one deserves to be in a 10×10… No one…”
Shadowlilly1993 posted: “Yall can judge me as much as you want. I’m on his side.This kid needs people behind him. I hope to meet him one day he fascinates me @J_tsar.”
A teen who goes by the Twitter handle Wildziall, says: “I wonder what jahar is thinking about right now.”
In another, she said: “My little brother just said he would cover for me if I snuck out of the house to meet up with jahar I love him.”
Meanwhile, a Facebook group that sprung up shortly after the bombings, “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent”, has more than 8,000 followers.
The group, loaded with conspiracy theories and proclamations of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s innocence, is by invitation only.
Vocal fans of the “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is Innocent” Facebook group have claimed that neither Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan, was responsible for the Boston bombing.
Instead, they say, a government-funded group of mercenaries from a private company staged the event and framed the Chechen pair.
The company they accuse, Craft International, trains military and police teams through tactical and combat scenarios. Its founder, retired Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, wrote the best-selling book American Sniper and recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history.
Chris Kyle was killed in February at a Texas gun range, by a fellow veteran struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Katherine Russell Tsarnaev’s new lawyer, Joshua Dratel, insists that the Boston Marathon bombing suspect’s widow will co-operate with the investigation into the terrorist atrocity.
Joshua Dratel, who has represented several terrorism suspects, joined the legal team of Katherine Russell, who was married to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, last week.
Katherine Russell has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but the FBI are currently interrogating her to find out if she had any clue as to her husband’s plans.
The bombing at the marathon’s finish line on April 15 killed three people and injured more than 260.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev’s new lawyer Joshua Dratel insists that she will co-operate with the investigation into the terrorist atrocity
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother Dzhokhar, originally from Chechnya, are believed to have carried out the attacks due to their radical jihadist beliefs.
Joshua Dratel, from New York, today said that he joined Katherine Russell’s legal team to help her navigate the criminal justice system and to protect her interests.
He said she had spoken with investigators and planned to keep co-operating.
“I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future,” he said.
“There’s no inconsistency between that and her interests at this point.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is in a prison hospital facing charges that could bring the death penalty. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died on April 19 after a shootout with police.
Katherine Russell, 24, had been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and two-year-old daughter, but has been staying with her parents in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, since the day her husband was killed.
She has reverted to using her maiden name, switching from her married name of Tsarnaeva.
Among the questions about Katherine Russell is what she knew or saw in the weeks leading up to the bombing, and in the days after it.
Two U.S. officials have said that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators the bombs were assembled in the small apartment Katherine Russell shared with her husband.
One of her lawyers has previously said Katherine Russell was working long hours and was frequently away from the apartment.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial in Virginia is legal, according to the county sheriff.
Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was buried at a Doswell cemetery last Thursday, angering some in the community after it was claimed that authorities were not consulted about the Muslim burial.
Neighbors of the cemetery have argued that a police presence will be needed at the cemetery while Caroline County officials investigated whether the burial had been done properly and legally.
Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa said in a statement that the official paperwork including the death certificate and burial permit were in order.
Tony Lippa said: “It would appear that all paperwork is in order at this point.
“Like the rest of America, the citizens of this county were outraged by the Boston Marathon Bombings. We too mourned for the loss of life, prayed for the survivors, and offered our support.
“Unfortunately we now find ourselves forever connected to this tragedy in the most unsavory way – as the final resting place of one of the alleged terrorist.”
The sheriff’s office will provide the same amount of protection to Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial site as any other cemetery in Caroline County.
The statement said: “The Caroline County Sheriff’s Office cannot, nor will we, divert our limited resources towards the protection of a single gravesite, especially one belonging to that of a terrorist.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried at a Doswell cemetery, angering some in the community after it was claimed that authorities were not consulted about the Muslim burial
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s remains were rejected by cemeteries in many cities for fear of desecration and demonstrations.
Sheriff Tony Lippa said last week that he learned of the burial from the media and added that the county does not have the money to provide security and that it will be the cemetery’s responsibility.
The cemetery director told MyFoxBoston that he is not concerned about adding security and added that Doswell is a close community.
He also shared details of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial, saying he was buried in a small ceremony Thursday morning after being draped in three white sheets and laid on his right side to face Mecca.
The cemetery director declined to say who was in attendance.
The decision to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the small Islamic cemetery in rural Virginia has also sparked fury some members of the area’s Islamic community, who say they weren’t consulted, according to the Associated Press.
Imam Ammar Amonette, of the Islamic Center of Virginia, said that his group was never consulted.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried under a shroud of secrecy Wednesday evening at the Al-Barzakh Cemetery in central Virginia, about 15 miles from Richmond.
Martha Mullen, a professional counselor who has a degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, said she coordinated the clandestine burial with the help of the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond after a number of cemeteries refused to take his body.
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Boston Marathon bombings investigators are examining whether suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was influenced by Magomed Kartashov, a distant cousin with ties to extremist Islamist groups in Russia.
Magomed Kartashov is founder and leader of a group called The Union of the Just which reportedly promotes the application of Islamic Sharia law and has protested against the U.S.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev is said to have met Magomed Kartashov for the first time when he spent six months in Dagestan, Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region, last year.
His mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told TIME Magazine that the two “became very close”.
Magomed Kartashov is founder and leader of a group called The Union of the Just which reportedly promotes the application of Islamic Sharia law
The Union of the Just publicly renounces violence, but several of its members have ties to militants.
A lawyer for Magomed Kartashov confirmed to ABC News that Russian security agents recently interviewed her client about his links to Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Magomed Kartashov admits that the two were close but insists that it was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who tried to “pull him into extremism”.
He is currently in jail on charges of resisting police in an unrelated matter. His lawyer expects he will remain there for at least two more months.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed during a violent standoff with police on April 19, days after he and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, allegedly planted homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured alive and has been charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces the death penalty.
Ever since the attack, investigators have been trying to understand how the brothers would have become radicalized to the point of wanting to kill and maim people in the U.S., the country they called home.
Much of the focus has been on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month visit to Dagestan, a restive region in southern Russia that is home to an Islamist militant insurgency. They want to know if and how Tamerlan Tsarnaev attempted to join militant groups there.
Earlier, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that investigators are also looking into Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s contacts with a young militant named Mahmud Mansur Nidal.
The two were reportedly seen leaving a controversial Salafist mosque in the capital of Makhachkala that has been popular with militants over the years.
They also want to know about possible contacts with a Canadian-Russian militant named William Plonikov, who was killed in a police shootout last July, just days before Tamerlan Tsarnaev suddenly left the country.
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Christian Martha Mullen today revealed that she helped authorities coordinate the secret burial this week of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a Muslim cemetery in Doswell, Virginia.
“Jesus says [to] love our enemies,” Martha Mullen, 48, told the Boston Globe’s Wesley Lowery in an exclusive interview.
“So I was sitting in Starbucks and thought, maybe I’m the one person who needs to do something.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried under a shroud of secrecy Wednesday evening at the Al-Barzakh Cemetery in central Virginia, about 15 miles from Richmond
Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was buried under a shroud of secrecy Wednesday evening at the Al-Barzakh Cemetery in central Virginia, about 15 miles from Richmond.
Martha Mullen said she coordinated the clandestine burial with the help of the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond after a number of cemeteries refused to take his body.
Martha Mullen said she coordinated the clandestine burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev with the help of the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond
Within an hour of contacting the group, she got a response saying a plot had been found. So Martha Mullen called the officials overseeing Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial and arranged to have the body, which was being held at a Worcester, Massachusetts funeral home, transported to Virginia to be buried Wednesday evening.
The development has infuriated some residents of the rural Virginia town as well as members of the area’s Islamic community who say they weren’t consulted in the decision.
“The whole Muslim community here is furious,” Imam Ammar Amonette of the Islamic Center of Virginia told the Associated Press.
“Frankly, we are furious that we were never given any information. It was all done secretly behind our backs.”
“Now everybody who’s buried in that cemetery, their loved ones are going to have to go to that place,” he added.
News of the burial comes several days after a Massachusetts police chief went on national television to plead for help in finding a plot for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as number of cemeteries and lawmakers in three states had turned down requests to bury his body.
Meanwhile, the funeral home where Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was being held had become the site of ongoing protests.
Martha Mullen, a professional counselor who has a degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, said she was disgusted by reports of the protests and decided to take action.
She later called the Boston Globe wanting to tell her story, according to the reporter who took the call.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, are accused of carrying out the April 15 twin bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a violent shootout with police on April 19 and his brother, who was injured in the gunfight, was captured in Watertown, Massachusetts after an 18-hour manhunt.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death certificate, which was released on Friday, showed that he was shot in the firefight and then run over and dragged by a vehicle. Police say it was Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s brother who mowed over his body as he was making a getaway.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was claimed by his uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, who asked that the remains be placed in a municipal cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Tsarnaev lived with his wife, Katherine Russell. But city officials would not allow that to happen.
Katherine Russell did not claim the body, which is why it was released to Ruslan Tsarni.
The public was not notified that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body had been moved until after it was transported from the funeral home Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, police officials announced that: “A courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased.”
On average, burials cost $6,000 to $10,000, which covers basic services of a funeral director and staff, including the casket as well as embalming and sanitation of the body, according to the Funeral Consumer Guardian Society, a consumer advocacy group.
Typically, the person who claims the body – which in this case would be Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle – pays these costs.
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The family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed in the Boston marathon bombings, has revealed the heartbreaking moment their daughter Jane awoke two weeks after the attack and learned her brother had died.
Jane Richard, 7, lost her leg in the April 15 blast, while her mother Denise, 42, suffered head injuries, her father Bill, 42, was hit by shrapnel and her brother Martin lost his life.
Only her oldest brother, 12-year-old Henry, escaped without injury.
In a statement released on Thursday, the family revealed Jane awoke two weeks after the attack “with difficult questions that needed to be answered”.
“There are not words to describe how hard sharing this heartbreaking news was on all of us,” it read.
Amid the tragedy, the family is celebrating the progress of little Jane, who has now undergone her eleventh surgery to close the wound on her left leg and to eventually prepare it for a prosthesis.
Jane Richard has battled infections in hospital and faces more surgeries after losing her leg below the knee.
“While she has more trips to the O.R. ahead of her, last night’s operation marked an important milestone,” the statement read.
The family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed in the Boston marathon bombings, has revealed the heartbreaking moment their daughter Jane awoke two weeks after the attack and learned her brother had died
“If things go well, Jane could be ready to transition to the rehabilitation stage of her recovery in the next few weeks.”
Bill Richard is recovering from his shrapnel wound and is hopeful that he will regain hearing he lost from the blast, while Denise is recovering from her surgeries, but is still missing sight in one eye.
Henry Richard has returned to school, “which gives him a needed sense of routine and normalcy”, the statement, which was uploaded to the family’s website, said.
The Richards also took the time to thank members of the public and authorities for their help throughout “our very darkest hour”.
“We want to thank the people who quickly got to Jane and addressed her injury in the street because they saved her life,” it read.
“We also salute those who stood guard over Martin’s body so he was not alone. Those officers will never know how comforting that was in our very darkest hour.”
Jane Richard is believed to have been standing on the marathon fence next to the big brother she idolized when the first of two bombs detonated near to the finish line.
Images from before the blast appear to show Bill Richard, 42, a community organizer, holding his youngest children up on the railings as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev plants his backpack bomb just behind them.
Bill Richard and his son Henry, 12, managed to escape from the bomb attack uninjured.
The bombs, described by experts as makeshift anti-personnel devices, were made from pressure cookers packed with shrapnel and ball bearings to cause the maximum injuries to bystanders.
Police believe they were planted by brothers Dzhokhar, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26. After their images were released by the FBI, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in an ensuing gunfight with police.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat outside a home hours later and was treated in hospital for an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the neck. He remains in federal prison in Massachusetts and is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction.
For updates from the Richard family, visit their blog.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, the widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has retained legal counsel Joshua Dratel, who has an extensive client roster of suspected and convicted terrorists.
Katherine Russell added attorney Joshua Dratel to her legal team, her Rhode Island-based lawyer Amato DeLuca said on Wednesday.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev has retained legal counsel Joshua Dratel, who has an extensive client roster of suspected and convicted terrorists
New York lawyer Joshua Dratel, whose office in Downtown Manhattan is just blocks away from Ground Zero, previously defended Guantanamo Bay detainees and suspects in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, 24, has been under increased scrutiny ever since federal officials found radical Islamist materials on her laptop, including the al Qaeda magazine Inspire.
Investigators also found traces of explosive residue in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, home Katherine Russell had shared with her late husband Tamerlan Tsarnaev and their 3-year-old daughter, Zahara.
Katherine Russell’s defense team said in a statement that she “plans to continue to meet with investigators, part of a series of meetings over many hours where she has answered questions”.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, the widow of his late older brother Tamerlan, had nothing to do with the April 15 Boston Marathon attacks, it was revealed today.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has made the statement to law enforcement officials looking into Katherine Russell’s possible involvement in the planning of the bombings allegedly carried out by her husband, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and her brother-in-law, NBC News reported.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a police gun battle on April 19. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured and charged in connection to the bombings following a massive manhunt that ended when he was discovered wounded hiding inside a boat in a backyard.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, the widow of his late older brother Tamerlan, had nothing to do with the April 15 Boston Marathon attacks
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, 24, has been under increased scrutiny ever since federal officials found radical Islamist materials on her laptop, including the al Qaeda magazine Inspire.
Investigators also found traces of explosive residue in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, home Katherine Russell had shared with her late husband and their daughter.
Katherine Russell’s defense team said in a statement that she “plans to continue to meet with investigators, part of a series of meetings over many hours where she has answered questions”.
It was also revealed Wednesday that the 24-year-old Muslim convert has hired a prominent criminal lawyer with experience defending terrorism cases.
Katherine Russell added New York lawyer Joshua Dratel to her legal team, her attorney Amato DeLuca confirmed.
Joshua Dratel has represented a number of terrorism suspects in federal courts and military commissions, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee David Hicks, who attended an al-Qaida-linked training camp in Afghanistan.
Nadine Ascencao, the former girlfriend of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, revealed he slapped her and beat her head against a car because she was wearing shorts.
Nadine Ascencao, 25, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, said she and Tamerlan Tsarnaev split up after he became so abusive she called police.
The couple dated for three years and she said he became increasingly religious during that time.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, set off the bomb at the marathon on April 15 that killed three by-standers and injured more than 260 people.
The Boston suspect was killed in a stand-off with police four days later and his young brother is in police custody after being injured in the same shoot-out.
Nadine Ascencao told Inside Edition that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a former amateur boxer, attacked her after she wore a tank top and shorts to a pool party.
Nadine Ascencao, the former girlfriend of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, revealed he slapped her and beat her head against a car because she was wearing shorts
She said he screamed at her “what are you wearing” and then became violent.
Nadine Ascencao said: “He literally grabbed my jaw and he was telling me <<you are not going to wear this, do you understand what I’m saying>> and he kept pushing my head until I hit the car and it hurt and that made me really upset and he just slapped me across the face. But that right there just made me so furious.”
She said she told she was going to dial 911 and he told her to “go ahead”.
Nadine Ascencao said in the interview with Inside Edition: “The police officer goes up to him and she said, <<did you hit her?>>
“He goes, <<I just gave her a little slap>>. She goes <<excuse me what did you just do to her?>>
“[He said] I just gave her a little slap.
“She said, <<turn around sir>> and just handcuffed him.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was arrested on domestic assault and battery charges and the mugshots later emerged after he was identified as the suspect in the bomb attack.
However, despite the violent outburst Nadine Ascencao did not press charges, which she says she now regrets.
Nadine Ascencao said: “At that time I was young and really didn’t think it through.”
In previous interviews, Nadine Ascencao said then boyfriend Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who she met at high school, became increasingly religious and was angered if she wore Western clothes.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev later went on to marry Katherine Russell, who converted to Islam.
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Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried in a secret midnight service at an undisclosed location after a mystery benefactor came forward – ending weeks of controversy.
According to federal officials, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was taken from the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlor and entombed under cover of darkness outside of the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, where his remains have laid since last Friday.
The burial location was approved by Ruslan Tsarni, the Boston Marathon suspects’ outspoken uncle, who has been attempting to find a cemetery that would accept his nephew for burial.
“As a result of our public appeal for help a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased,” said Worcester police in a statement this morning.
“His body is no longer in the city of Worcester and is now entombed.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was finally buried one day after Worcester Police Chief Gary Gemme pleaded for help in burying the suspect – who was killed in a firefight with police on April 19th in Watertown, just outside of Boston.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried in a secret midnight service at an undisclosed location after a mystery benefactor came forward
“There is a need to do the right thing,” said Gary Gemme.
“We are not barbarians. We bury the dead.”
The statement did not say where his body now rests.
Peter Stefan, the director of the funeral home had previously expressed his strong desire to find a proper burial site for Tamerlan Tsarnaev despite protests outside the funeral home and the refusal of Cambridge to take his body for burial.
Before today’s announcement, a retired Vermont school teacher, Paul Keane had yesterday offered up his family’s plot in Hamden, Connecticut.
He intended the offer to be a tribute to his mother, who taught him to, “love thine enemy”.
Paul Keane told reporters that he didn’t withdraw the offer, even after he received hate-mail – but no one from Worcester contacted him.
And the firm responsible for digging graves at the Mount Carmel Cemetery said that they have dug no fresh graves this week.
And on Monday, the founder of the organization that built Colorado’s largest mosque is offered to bury suspected Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a Denver-area Muslim cemetery.
Sheikh Abu-Omar Almubarac said he would pay for a traditional Muslim burial – no headstone, monument or casket – at a plot at a Muslim cemetery in Denver or Bennett.
He refused to say which one out of concern for “undue publicity”. He said he would bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev as long as his family can get the body to Denver.
It is not known whether the family of Tamerlan Tsarnaev took him up on that offer.
Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst with the Worcester police force said the body was no longer in Worcester and is now entombed. She did not disclose where the body was taken.
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American citizen Robel Phillipos is one of the three more suspects arrested last month in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings.
Robel Phillipos’s past and character isn’t as much of a mystery to us as fellow suspects Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, but the question still remains, how did this former daycare worker turn into a suspect?
Seeing what happens to Robel Phillipos, who is an American citizen like his colleague and friend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, will show us how investigators and law officials treat someone who allegedly aided suspect accused of terrorism.
Robel Phillipos, 19, isn’t charged with physically tampering with evidence, more specifically throwing out Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s backpack, but he is being charged with lying to federal investigators over the course of four interviews.
“The only allegation he made is a misrepresentation,” his lawyer Derege Demissie said.
Robel Phillipos and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were classmates even before college. Robel Phillipos, according to school officials who spoke to Bloomberg, was a 2011 graduate of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also graduated in 2011, and actually received a $2,500 scholarship. What isn’t clear is how close they were in school.
“A yearbook photograph shows a smiling Phillipos. Almost directly in front of him, Tsarnaev stares at the camera – his hand gently resting under his chin,” reads the CNN report, but that doesn’t tell us if or how close Robel Phillipos and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were friends in high school. And though there are multiple reports from friends, neighbors, and people who played basketball with Robel Phillipos, none of them have commented on the type of friendship, if any, that he and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had. He and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were classmates for a brief period at UMass Dartmouth.
Robel Phillipos is one of the three more suspects arrested last month in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings
Robel Phillipos dropped out of School to take care his sick mother.
UMass Dartmouth said that Robel Phillipos, like Dias Kadyrbayev, was not a student at the time of his arrest. But reports say that before he dropped out, he was studying marketing.
“According to a former classmate and friend who worked with Phillipos at a daycare center, Phillipos was attending classes remotely at the time of his arrest because he was staying home to care for his mother, who is ill,” report Erin Baldassari and Amy Saltzman for the Cambridge Chronicle. Though the daycare center where Robel Phillipos worked at isn’t specified, we know he was also active in the Cambridge Kids Council, Cambridge Kids’ Council – a program chaired by the mayor of Cambridge and is, according to its website, “dedicated to developing policy recommendations and programs aimed at improving the quality of life for children, youth and families in the City of Cambridge.”
Robel Phillipos, according to USA Today, was raised by his mother, Genet Bekele, who herself was an immigrant from Ethiopia.
“She is a single mother and works with refugees,” NBC Boston reported, while the Cambridge Chronicle team added: “A devout Protestant, Phillipos’ mother worked directly with refugees and often involved herself in charitable work, the friend said.”
“Do What You Have to Do.”
That’s the phrase that Robel Phillipos is quoted as saying in the criminal complaint. He apparently muttered those words to Dias Kadyrbayev, while discussing what to do with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s backpack. That sounds like reluctance on Robel Phillipos’s part, and according to one of his friends, that’s his catchphrase when he doesn’t like what’s going on. The Chronicle report reads: “One friend said Phillipos wasn’t prone to drama and would often detach himself from sticky situations. Defending allegations that Phillipos lied to investigators to protect Tsarnaev, friends said Phillipos didn’t get in trouble often.
“I know Robel, if he’s not with something, he’s going to say, <<You do you>>. That’s how Robel works,” a friend said, referring to the criminal complaint that quotes Phillipos as reportedly saying, <<Do what you have to do>>.”
Robel Phillipos lived close to the carjacking.
This was mentioned in the initial reports, but Robel Phillipos and his mother lived very close from the carjacking the Tsarnaev brothers committed, which eventually became their undoing.
“The family’s apartment building is located next to the gas station where the carjacking victim from the night of the shootout in Watertown escaped,” reports NBC Boston. There’s no indication from officials that Robel Phillipos did anything more than lie to federal officials, but that’s a strange coincidence to have the Tsarnaev brothers on the loose that night and were in walking distance to their friend’s house.
Robel Phillipos, 19, was released Monday on $100,000 bond and ordered to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet while under house arrest awaiting trial.
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Sheikh Abu-Omar Al-mubarac, founder of the organization that built Colorado’s largest mosque, is offering to bury suspected Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a Denver-area Muslim cemetery.
Sheikh Abu-Omar Al-mubarac said he will pay for a traditional Muslim burial – no headstone, monument or casket – at a plot at a Muslim cemetery in Denver or Bennett.
He refused to say which one out of concern for “undue publicity”. He says he’ll bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev as long as his family can get the body to Denver.
Sheikh Abu-Omar Al-mubarac incorporated the Colorado Muslim Society in the late 1960s but made his offer independently of the organization. He says only God can judge Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
However, the Colorado Muslim Society issued a statement on Monday night distancing itself from its founder, Sheikh Abu-Omar Al-mubarac.
“It has recently been reported that the Colorado Muslim Society has offered to provide burial services for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the individuals who perpetrated the grave and destructive bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon.
“This report is absolutely untrue. The individual who has reportedly made this offer does not speak on behalf of the Colorado Muslim Society,” the statement says.
It continues: “The Colorado Muslim Society strongly condemns all acts of violence and grieves with all of America after the attacks in Boston.
Sheikh Abu-Omar Al-mubarac is offering to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a Denver-area Muslim cemetery
“The conduct of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is abhorrent and contrary to every principle and belief that underlies the purpose of the Colorado Muslim Society.”
The Colorado Muslim Society’s general counsel Qusair Mohamedbhai told The Denver Post: “We would never, ever do something like that – offer to bury someone who has committed an extreme act of violence against this country.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle Ruslan Tsarni, of Montgomery Village, Maryland, has been unable to bury his nephew in Massachusetts because of protests.
The funeral director who currently has the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in his possession has made a plea to the State Department to help him settle what will happen with the remains.
The city of Cambridge, where the suspected bombers lived prior to the attack, refused to bury the body.
Peter Stefan, whose business in Worcester, Massachusetts has been picketed by protesters, said that everyone deserves a dignified burial.
The impasse over 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body came as a local man started a fundraising campaign to have the alleged terrorist’s body returned to his family in Russia.
William Breault, from Worcester, has kick-started the campaign with $500 to send the body back to Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s parents.
Peter Stefan said on Monday that he understood the reluctance to deal with the remains following the atrocious attacks last month.
However he told NBC: “Everyone wants him sent back to Russia. I’m gonna get on the phone with the necessary people and say, <<We need help with this>>.”
He added: “It also makes us look bad. In this country, we bury people. We don’t leave them hanging around.”
Peter Stefan said that he believed that alleged terrorist’s family wants his body returned to Russia. Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has repeatedly claimed that her son’s were framed for the Boston bombing.
A State Department spokesman said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s family should contact the Russian Consulate for help while Massachusetts Governor Patrick Deval called the burial a “family issue”.
Cambridge city manager Robert Healy said on Sunday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was not welcomed in one of its cemeteries.
“I have determined that it is not in the best interest of peace within the city to execute a cemetery deed for a plot within the Cambridge Cemetery for the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev,” Robert Healey said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle Ruslan Tsarni visited the funeral home over the weekend to claim his nephew’s body.
Ruslan Tsarni chose to step in, he said, because “no one wants to associate their names with such evil events” and because religion and tradition call for his nephew to be buried.
Every cemetery in Massachusetts has turned down the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev but Peter Stefan remains insistent that this death be handled like any other.
He has also reached out unsuccessfully to cemeteries in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Some protesters outside the funeral home believe the bombing suspect should be buried at sea, similar to what was done with the body of Osama bin Laden.
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Robel Phillipos, friend of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who is accused of lying to FBI investigators, will be released on bail with house arrest, a federal judge has ruled today.
American citizen Robel Phillipos, 19, is to be freed on a $100,000 bond provided he wears an electronic monitoring bracelet and is confined to his home.
He and two other friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were charged last week with hindering the investigation.
Robel Phillipos faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.
Robel Phillipos, friend of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, will be released on bail with house arrest
He is accused of lying to investigators about visiting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dormitory at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth on April 18, three days after the bombings.
Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, two other college friends, have been charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by taking a backpack with the remains of fireworks and a laptop from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dorm room before the FBI searched it.
None of the three men are implicated in the planning of the bombings.
In court documents, defense attorneys for Robel Phillipos said their client had nothing to do with the attack and was not a flight risk.
According to a resume filed with the court, Robel Phillipos was studying marketing and sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, and was expected to graduate in 2015.
But the university has said he was not enrolled during the current semester.
In letters filed with the court, friends and family members described Robel Phillipos as peaceful and non-violent.
“I do not believe that my beloved Robel crosses the line intentionally to support or assist such a horrendous act against us the people of the USA,” his aunt, Zewditu Alemu, wrote.
“By nature he does not like violence.”
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Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the Boston Marathon bombers lived prior to their terror attack, has announced they will not allow dead suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body to be buried there, it was revealed Sunday.
City manager Robert Healy said Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was not welcomed in one of its cemeteries.
Cambridge, MA, has announced they will not allow dead suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body to be buried there
“I have determined that it is not in the best interest of peace within the city to execute a cemetery deed for a plot within the Cambridge Cemetery for the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev,” Robert Healey said.
The news comes as Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, arrived in the Bay State to claim his nephew’s body and prepare for a funeral.
Meanwhile funeral director Peter Stefan, whose business is being protested and has turned away by every cemetery, is determined with burying Tamerlan Tamerlan’s body, saying everyone deserves a dignified burial regardless of the circumstances of their death.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of Boston bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, appeared in photos of her as a younger woman wearing a low-cut blouse and having her hair teased like a 1980s rock star.
After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.
But in recent years, people noticed a change. The Boston bombers’ mother began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.
Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
In another, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, 45, insists there is no mystery. She’s no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons – Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was wounded and captured – are innocent.
“It’s all lies and hypocrisy,” she told The Associated Press in Dagestan.
“I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I’ve never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva arrived in the U.S. in 2002, settling in a working-class section of Cambridge, Massachusetts. With four children, Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva qualified for food stamps and were on and off public assistance benefits for years. The large family squeezed itself into a third-floor apartment.
She took classes at the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, before becoming a state-licensed aesthetician. Anzor Tsarnaev, who had studied law, fixed cars.
By some accounts, the family was tolerant.
Bethany Smith, a New Yorker who befriended Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s two daughters, said in an interview with Newsday that when she stayed with the family for a month in 2008 while she looked at colleges, she was welcomed even though she was Christian and had tattoos.
“I had nothing but love over there. They accepted me for who I was,” Bethany Smith told the newspaper.
“Their mother, Zubeidat, she considered me to be a part of the family. She called me her third daughter.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said she and her son Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named “Misha”.
The man, whose full name she didn’t reveal but later was identified as Mikhail Allakhverdov, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam.
“I wasn’t praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said.
By then, she had left her job at the day spa and was giving facials in her apartment. One client, Alyssa Kilzer, noticed the change when Zubeidat Tsarnaeva put on a head scarf before leaving the apartment.
“She had never worn a hijab while working at the spa previously, or inside the house, and I was really surprised,” Alyssa Kilzer wrote in a post on her blog.
“She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious. She was often fasting.”
Alyssa Kilzer wrote that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was a loving and supportive mother, and she felt sympathy for her plight after the April 15 bombings.
But the woman stopped visiting the family’s home for spa treatments in late 2011 or early 2012 when, during one session, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva “started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9/11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims”.
“It’s real,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said, according to Alyssa Kilzer.
“My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet.”
In the spring of 2010, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s eldest son, Tamerlan, got married in a ceremony at a Boston mosque that no one in the family had previously attended. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife, Katherine Russell, a Rhode Island native and convert from Christianity, now have a three-year-old daughter, Zahara.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva married into a Chechen family but was an outsider. She is an Avar, from one of the dozens of ethnic groups in Dagestan. Her native village is now a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism or Wahabbism.
It is unclear whether religious differences fueled tension in their family. Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva divorced in 2011.
About the same time, there was a brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia’s security service.
The vague warning from the Russians was that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an amateur boxer in the U.S., was a follower of radical Islam who had changed drastically since 2010.
That led the FBI to interview Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the family’s home in Cambridge. Officials ultimately placed his name, and his mother’s name, on various watch lists, but the inquiry was closed in late spring of 2011.
After the bombings, Russian authorities told U.S. investigators they had secretly recorded a phone conversation in which Zubeidat Tsarnaeva had vaguely discussed jihad with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The Russians also recorded Zubeidat Tsarnaeva talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.
Anzor Tsarnaev’s brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told the AP from his home in Maryland that he believed his former sister-in-law had a “big-time influence” on her older son’s growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school.
While Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living in Russia for six months in 2012, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who had remained in the U.S., was arrested at a shopping mall in the suburb of Natick, Massachusetts, and accused of trying to shoplift $1,624 worth of women’s clothing from a department store.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva failed to appear in court to answer the charges that fall, and instead left the country.
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According to criminal complaint, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s college friend Dias Kadyrbayev sent a text warning him that his fast was all over the news, the Boston bomber responded with “lol” (universal text message-speak for a joke).
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, then told his pal Dias Kadyrbayev: “You better not text me.”
Dias Kadyrbayev, 19, is one of three of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s college friends arrested on Wednesday by federal authorities and accused of trying to cover the suspected terrorist’s tracks by throwing away his computer and a backpack full of firearms.
He and Azamat Tazhayakov, both Kazakh nationals, were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by destroying evidence. American citizen Robel Phillipos is charged with knowingly and willfully making false statements to investigators.
The three young men were friends of Dzhokhar Tsarneav at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, where the bomb suspect was a promising student.
According to the criminal complaint from federal authorities, Dias Kadyrbayev sent a text message to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 18 after the FBI released surveillance images of him at the Boston Marathon with his brother Tamerlan.
Dias Kadyrbayev warned his friend that that he was plastered across TV News.
“Tsarnaev’s return texts contained <<lol>> and other things KADYRBAYEV interpreted as jokes,” documents say.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also wrote: “You better not text me” and “Come to my room and take whatever you want”.
Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov were identified as the two friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who have been arrested on April 20
Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov had already been in police custody for more than a week at the time of their arrest because they were previously questioned about their license plate that reads “TERRORISTA#1”. Authorities then held them on immigration issues because they are in the country illegally after their academic visas expired.
The nature of these charges suggests that none of these young men helped plan the fatal Marathon bombing, which left three dead and more than 260 injured, but they did work to cover Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s tracks from investigators and evade capture.
The detailed criminal complaint goes through the timeline of events according to each of the 19-year-olds, all of whom met Dzhokhar Tsarnaev when they started school at UMASS-Dartmouth in the same semester in the fall of 2011.
Like many throughout Boston, none of the three boys had any inkling that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was involved until the FBI released pictures of the two suspects.
On the same day that the FBI released pictures and video clips of the Tsarnaev brothers at the bomb scene, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov removed items from the younger bomber’s dorm room.
That was just two days before the FBI searched the room.
The criminal complaint lists that they removed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s backpack from his room and “agreed to get rid of it after concluding from news reports that Tsarnaev was one of the Boston Marathon bombers”.
The three friends- Dias Kadyrbayev, Azamat Tazhayakov and Robel Phillipos- went over to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s on-campus dormitory after seeing the news reports.
When the group arrived at the dorm, Dias Kadyrbayev showed Azamat Tazhayakov a text from the bomber that said: “I’m about to leave if you need something in my room take it.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not specify where he was going, but Azamat Tazhayakov told investigators that he felt that this meant he would never see Tsarnaev alive again.
They were let in the room by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s roommate, who said that Dzhokhar had been there just a few hours earlier.
The criminal complaint says that when there, the three friends watched a movie.
Dias Kadyrbayev “knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the Marathon bombing”.
Azamat Tazhayakov was more alarmed because the tubes had been emptied but not destroyed, meaning that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could have either used the explosives or planned to use them.
Kadyrbayev found Vaseline in the room, which he told the others Tsarnaev used to make bombs.
At one point in the police interviews, Azamat Tazhayakev said that during a meal a month before the attack, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told he and Dias Kadyrbayev that he knew how to make a bomb.
Dias Kadyrbayev was reportedly the one who “decided to remove the backpack from the room in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble”.
In a slightly unexpected explanation, Dias Kadyrbayev says that he took Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s laptop because he did not want to the roommate to think that he was “stealing or behaving suspiciously by just taking the backpack”.
Though the release of the photos is the first time that alarm bells went off in the students’ minds, it is not the first time that they interacted with the bomber since Monday April 15.
Both Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov- who shared an apartment in New Bedford- spent time with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev two days after the bombing.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev met with Dias Kadyrbayev briefly, where Kadyrbayev noted that Dzhokhar “appeared to have given himself a short haircut”.
Azamat Tazahayakov told police that he spent more time with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev earlier that same day, when Tsarnaev drove him to his off-campus apartment after class and then they spent time hanging out in the apartment.
During multiple interviews, American Robel Phillipos lied about various parts of the story- at first saying that he never went to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dorm room, then saying that they didn’t remove anything, then saying that they went to the dorm but it was locked and they never entered.
After repeating false versions of the same story, Robel Phillipos recanted his previous testimony in the fourth interview on April 26.
The gravity of the situation did not appear to hit Robel Phillipos until after the trio returned to the off-campus apartment and they “started to freak out, because it became clear from a CNN report that we were watching that Jahar [Dzhokhar Tsarnaev] was one of the Boston Marathon bombers”.
The Boston police were the first to announce the arrests via Twitter, and they followed up their initial tweet by confirming that there is no threat to public safety.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, the widow of Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has stopped co-operating with authorities as it emerged female DNA found on one of the detonated bombs does not belong to her.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was later killed in a gunfight with authorities, called his wife in the hours after the FBI released surveillance images of him and his younger brother, Dzhokhar.
But only Katherine Russell, 24, knows what was said in the conversation, as she has stopped cooperating with authorities over recent days, the New York Times reported.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, the widow of Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has stopped co-operating with authorities as it emerged female DNA found on one of the detonated bombs does not belong to her
Authorities are skeptical of Katherine Russell’s insistence that she played no role in the Boston attack or in helping the Tsarnaev brothers escape the authorities following the release of the photographs, the Times reported.
A source told CNN that the bombs were built in the apartment that Tamerlan Tsarnaev shared with Katherine Russell and their 3-year-old daughter, Zahara. Residue samples were found on the kitchen table, the kitchen sink, and the bathtub, the source said.
Katherine Russell’s silence comes as sources told the newspaper that the fingerprints and female DNA found on at least one of the bombs did not belong to her. Authorities had taken a sample from her this week.
Spokesman Jason Pack confirmed that agents investigating the Boston bombings visited the North Kingstown home of Katherine Russell’s parents, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow has been staying since the Boston Marathon attacks.
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Following Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbaev arrest in the Boston Marathon bombings for obstructing justice, the Homeland Security Department ordered border agents “effective immediately” to verify that every international student who arrives in the U.S. has a valid student visa.
Azamat Tazhayakov, one of the three college students who were arrested on Wednesday, was able to get into the U.S. illegally on expired student visas, prompting the government’s first formal security change directly related to the April 15 attack.
The student visa for Azamat Tazhayakov had been terminated when he arrived in New York on January 20 but the border agent in the airport did not have access to the information about it in the Homeland Security Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, called SEVIS.
Kazakh Azamat Tazhayakov, 19, was a friend and classmate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
He left the U.S. in December and returned January 20, but earlier that month his student-visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed from the university.
Azamat Tazhayakov and a second Kazakh student were arrested this week on federal charges of obstruction of justice. They were accused of helping to get rid of a backpack containing fireworks linked to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. A third student, American citizen Robel Phillipos, was also arrested and accused of lying to authorities.
Azamat Tazhayakov was able to get into the U.S. illegally on expired student visa, prompting the government’s first formal security change directly related to the Boston attack
Dias Kadyrbaev, 19, called his dad and described their arrest as something out of a Hollywood blockbuster.
“He told me on the phone: <<Dad, we have been arrested just like in an American movie. They came over in armored vehicles with a platoon of officers, with guns and laser lights. They undressed us. It started snowing. But we were standing like that until the search of our apartment ended. I am home now, we have been released, everything is all right, don’t worry Dad>>,” the father Murat Kadyrbaev told a Russian television station.
A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, Peter Boogaard, said earlier this week that the government was working to fix the problem, which allowed Azamat Tazhayakov to be admitted into the country when he returned to the U.S.
Under existing procedures, border agents could verify a student’s status in SEVIS only when the person was referred to a second officer for additional inspection or questioning.
Azamat Tazhayakov was not sent to a second officer when he arrived. Under the new procedures, all border agents were expected to be able to access SEVIS by next week.
The U.S. government for years has recognized as a problem the inability of border agents at primary inspection stations to directly review student-visa information.
The Homeland Security Department was working before the Boston bombings to resolve the problem, but the new memo outlined interim procedures until the situation was corrected.
Under the new procedures, border agents will verify a student’s visa status before the person arrives in the U.S. using information provided in flight manifests.
If that information is unavailable, border agents will check the visa status manually with the agency’s national targeting data center.
The Obama administration announced an internal review earlier this week of how U.S. intelligence agencies shared sensitive information before the bombings and whether the government could have prevented the attack.
Republicans in Congress have promised oversight hearings, which begin Thursday next week.
Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday for details from the student visa applications of Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, including information about how Tazhayakov re-entered the United States.
Lawmakers and others have long been concerned about terrorists exploiting the student visa system to travel to the U.S.
A 20-year-old college student from Saudi Arabia was arrested in Texas in 2011 on federal charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
Authorities accused him of plotting to blow up dams, nuclear plants or the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. He was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
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