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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The Taliban are not usually known for their sense of humor, but when it comes to the troubles of their enemies it seems they can see the lighter side.
A spokesman for the Islamic fundamentalist group this week mocked David Petraeus’ extra-marital affair which led to his resignation as director of the CIA, describing him as a “bastard”.
He added that David Petraeus would have been executed for his adultery under a Taliban regime, and blamed America’s “free sex society” for his infidelity.
David Petraeus was commander of the Western forces in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011, leading the effort to prevent the Taliban returning to power.
He joined the CIA last year, but suddenly resigned last week after an FBI investigation revealed he had been cheating on his wife with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
A Taliban official showed unusual levity when asked about the affair Agence France-Presse, bursting out laughing during an interview in Pakistan.
“What a bastard!”, the official said.
“But all Americans are the same, it’s nothing new.”
A spokesman for Taliban group mocked David Petraeus’ extra-marital affair which led to his resignation as director of the CIA, describing him as a bastard
While David Petraeus lost his job over the ongoing scandal, which has also roped in his successor in Afghanistan, General John Allen, the consequences could have been much worse if he lived under a regime controlled by the Taliban.
The anonymous official pointed out that adultery is a capital offence under the laws of the Pashtun people as well as under Islamic sharia law.
“From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’ family,” he said.
“From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.”
David Petraeus may have sacrificed his career and his reputation, but under U.S. law he is not expected to face any criminal charges.
The Taliban official said the former general’s indiscretion was unsurprising, given the permissiveness of Western societies.
“It’s quite normal for Americans and Western people to behave like this,” he told AFP.
“They live in free sex societies where nobody cares about this sort of thing, so what do you expect?”
While radical Islamists may believe that “nobody cares” about sex scandals in the U.S., those who have been dragged in to the Petraeus affair may not feel the same way.
As well as David Petraeus and John Allen, Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite who uncovered the cheating after being sent threatening emails by Broadwell, have found themselves at the centre of a media storm since the scandal first hit last Friday.
IKEA has said it regrets that images of women are missing from the Saudi version of its catalogue.
Women are clearly present in corresponding images in the firm’s English-language catalogue.
The Swedish furniture company said “excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalogue is in conflict with the IKEA Group values”.
It attributed the gaffe to the fact its Saudi operation is run by a franchisee.
IKEA Saudi catalogue removes women from its pages
Several images in the catalogue, published on IKEA’s Saudi website, show women completely absent in a number of promotional scenes.
The same images in other versions of the catalogue include women.
IKEA said it was reviewing its “routines” in response to the issue.
“We support the fundamental human rights of all people and we do not accept any kind of discrimination,” the company said in a statement.
Islamic Sharia law is applied strictly in Saudi Arabia, where the ruling Al Saud family espouses a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism.
Women live under various restrictions, including no right to drive, and must be covered whenever they are outside the home.
Saudi leader King Abdullah is seen as trying to cautiously introduce reforms, some aimed at loosening restrictions on women’s right to vote.
IKEA, which posted net profits of almost 3 billion euros ($3.9 billion) last year, operates three branches in Saudi Arabia.
