Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Friend & Teacher Misha, the Bombings' Mystery Man
by Anna Nemtsova, Christopher Dickey Apr 24, 2013 7:55 PM EDT
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's mother, Zubeidat, tells Anna Nemtsova that
Russian and U.S. investigators are asking her about Misha, the Armenian
convert to Islam who influenced Tamerlan.
"Misha." A new name has emerged in the Boston Marathon bombing case-one
familiar to the family of the two young men accused of the atrocity, and
apparently of interest to the Russian and American security services as
well. An uncle of the alleged bombers claims that Misha, an Armenian convert
to Islam, had a huge influence on the elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev:
"Somehow he just took his brain." Under Misha's influence, Tamerlan gave up
boxing and music and withdrew into himself-classic signs of radicalization.
Russia Boston Suspects
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, mother of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is besieged by
reporters as she walks with an unidentified man near her home in
Makhachkala, Dagestan, southern Russia, on April 23, 2013. (Ilkham
Katsuyev/AP)
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed last week in a shootout with police. His
19-year-old brother and alleged accomplice, Dzhokhar, lies in a Boston
hospital with multiple bullet wounds. Misha's whereabouts are unknown.
On Wednesday, both Russian and American officials spent seven hours grilling
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the alleged bombers' mother, in the headquarters of the
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in Makhachkala, the capital of
Dagestan.
"Nobody asked me unpleasant questions," she told The Daily Beast. "But they
asked about Misha, who they suspect was the bad influence on my son."
Zubeidat is herself a religious woman. Since her sons first emerged as
suspects in the case, she has told reporters that they were innocent, or
perhaps that they were "set up" by the FBI and the FSB. Now she defends
Misha as well.
"Misha is a friend in Boston," she says. "I hope he is healthy and sound. He
is a young man. There is no negative." Investigators are barking up the
wrong tree, she said. "Misha is a crystal clean young man, an Armenian, a
Muslim with a red beard." He is "a new believer" and "an intellectual."
(Armenian culture is Christian. A man with Armenian roots in the United
States who converted to Islam might have his own issues of alienation.)
What Zubeidat did not say, and what reporters have not yet ascertained, is
Misha's last name or location. Apparently the family only knew this "crystal
clean" man by his first name, if that is his first name.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, reportedly answering questions put to him by
investigators in the hospital, has said he and his brother acted alone. He's
also reported to have told authorities that they carried out the attack in
part because of Tamerlan's anger over the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(This is now boilerplate for radicalized young men who identify with
extremist forms of Islam. Often they are indoctrinated by other young men
with videos and diatribes detailing the alleged, and sometimes all too real,
atrocities committed in those conflicts.)
Zubeidat says the American and Russian investigators "asked me if my son or
Misha were Salafis. I said, no, pure Muslims."
In fact, the world of Islam in the Caucasus, and to some extent among the
region's emigrants and exiles in the West, has seen massive inroads by the
radical Salafis who aspire to a pure form of Islam that they believe is
close to that experienced by the Prophet Muhammad and his followers. Their
ultra-fundamentalist interpretation of Islam-taken to its most extreme form
by al Qaeda and other proponents of violent jihad-has been displacing the
Sufi practice of the faith that is traditional in the Caucasus.
"Misha is a friend in Boston," she says. "I hope he is healthy and
sound. He is a young man. There is no negative."
Zubeidat said that since last Friday, crowds of reporters have chased her
all over Makhachkala. The American and Russian investigators questioned her
all day and night Tuesday and almost all day Wednesday. She has had her ups
and downs, "but right now I am OK," she said. "I have decided I will never
live in America, as America caused me a lot of pain. I feel comfortable in
my home, Dagestan, Russia."
She also said investigators from the United States were very nice to her:
"Are you tired, do you want a break, dear?" they asked her, she said. But as
she was interrogated, there were many aspects of the case she had trouble
understanding.
The FSB asked the FBI to look into Tamerlan's activities in 2011, when he
had not been in Russia for more than a decade. "Why would they report him?"
she wondered.
Perhaps Misha knows the answer.
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