The Boston Bombers' Awful Parents
They ignored the warnings, they deny the crime, and they're slinging false
accusations.
By William Saletan|Posted Monday, April 22, 2013, at 7:52 PM
Anzor Tsarnaev, who calls himself father of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev,
the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, gives an interview in
Makhachkala in this video grab from footage via Reuters TV, April 19, 2013.
Anzor Tsarnaev, the father of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the two
suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, gives an interview in this video
grab from footage via Reuters TV, April 19, 2013.
Photo by Reuters TV/Reuters
Three years ago, al-Qaeda's magazine, Inspire, published an article titled,
"Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom." The article explained how to build
a pressure-cooker device like the ones that blew up last week at the Boston
marathon. But the recipe left out the most important ingredient. To make a
bomb in your mom's kitchen, the first thing you need is an inattentive mom.
That's what Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had. We don't yet know where or
when they made the bombs they're accused of planting at the marathon. But we
do know that their father, Anzor Tsarnaev, and their mother, Zubeidat
Tsarnaeva, had plenty of warnings that Tamerlan was becoming dangerous.
Tamerlan was a human pressure cooker loaded with zeal, violence, and
destructive ideology. His parents, blinded by adoration and excuses, refused
to see it.
Most people who met or knew Tamerlan, including family members, say he was a
jerk. His dad, however, insists Tamerlan was "kind" and "very nice." Anzor
"lost control over that family quite a time ago," says his brother Ruslan.
In every interview, Anzor claims to know exactly what his kids have been up
to, though he hasn't seen them since he moved back to Dagestan a year ago.
He also claims, falsely, that Tamerlan "was never out of my sight" during
the young man's visit to Dagestan last year. According to Anzor, Tamerlan
was such a boxing stud that "in the U.S. everyone knows he is a celebrity."
When Anzor left Boston, he asked Tamerlan to keep an eye on Dzhokhar. He
thinks the elder brother has been keeping the younger one away from bad
influences.
Tamerlan's mother is just as deluded. She swears Tamerlan and Dzhokhar
couldn't be involved in a bomb plot because "my sons would never keep a
secret." Instead of correcting Tamerlan's conspiracy theories, she swallowed
them. According to one of her spa clients, Zubeidat recently called the 9/11
attacks a U.S. plot to stoke hatred of Muslims. "My son knows all about it,"
she allegedly told the client. Zubeidat also says the FBI has been watching
her family constantly for years, which the FBI denies. Last year, she was
arrested, but apparently never prosecuted, for shoplifting $1,600 worth of
clothes.
Anzor and Zubeidat were given several warnings that Tamerlan was headed for
trouble. Sometime between 2007 and 2009, Tamerlan and Zubeidat turned to
religion. Zubeidat became observant, but Tamerlan became intolerant and
hostile. He pushed his strict views on the rest of the family, causing
tensions. When his sister married a non-Muslim, Tamerlan didn't accept the
man. Tamerlan's uncle, Ruslan, perceived a change in his nephew's
personality. Ruslan says a family friend told him in 2009 that a Muslim
convert had "brainwashed" Tamerlan.
The tension exploded when Tamerlan, in a conversation during that period,
called Ruslan an "infidel." Tamerlan also challenged another uncle, Alvi
Tsarni, to a fight. No one in the family has explained what words ensued
between the parents and the uncles, but both uncles cut off contact with the
Tsarnaevs. Ruslan says his beef was with "the way they were bringing the
children up." Anzor, unchastened even by the marathon bombings, says the
uncles don't really know his kids. "They are just blabbing what they know
nothing about," he told the New York Times on Friday.
Around this time, Tamerlan was arrested and charged with domestic violence
for hitting his girlfriend. "Yes, I slapped her," he told police. The case
was eventually dismissed, and Anzor brushed it off. "He hit her lightly,"
Anzor told the Times. "There was jealousy . In America you can't touch a
woman."
In early 2011, two FBI agents, provoked by an alert from Russian
intelligence, came to the Tsarnaevs' apartment to speak to the family about
Tamerlan. Zubeidat says the agents explained that Tamerlan was visiting
"extremist sites" and that "they were afraid of him." She says Tamerlan
answered the agents defiantly, "I am in a country that gives me the right to
read whatever I want and watch whatever I want." Anzor shrugged off the
warning: "I knew what he was doing, where he was going. I raised my children
right." Zubeidat says the agents investigated Tamerlan only because "he
loved Islam."
So the warnings passed. When the marathon bombs exploded, and videos
implicated Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, the uncles acknowledged the evidence, but
the parents didn't. They didn't just stammer, as many parents would, that
their sons couldn't have done it. They declared that the young men had been
"set up," and they hurled conspiracy theories at the authorities. "The
police are to blame," said Anzor. "Being cowards, they shot the boy dead.
There are cops like this." He denounced the pursuit of his sons by law
enforcement as "a provocation of the special services who went after them
because my sons are Muslims and don't have anyone in America to protect
them." Zubeidat said the authorities "wanted to eliminate [Tamerlan] as a
threat because he was in love with Islam."
Anzor's sister, Maret Tsarnaeva, echoed these self-deceptions. "Growing up,
within the family, everything was perfect," she told reporters on Friday.
Her nephews had no motive to bomb anyone, she insisted: "For what beliefs? I
don't know them to have any strong beliefs." She concluded that "our boys
were framed." When reporters showed her video evidence implicating them, she
replied: "The picture was staged."
Neighbors and congregants at Tamerlan's mosque had warnings, too. In
November 2012, he angrily rebuked a merchant in Cambridge for advertising
Thanksgiving turkeys, which Tamerlan viewed as an affront to Islamic law. At
Friday prayers, he disrupted and criticized a sermon that defended the
celebration of Thanksgiving and July 4. Two months later, he interrupted an
imam who suggested that Martin Luther King, Jr., like the Prophet Mohammed,
was worthy of emulation. Tamerlan protested that King was "not a Muslim,"
and he called the imam a "Kafir," or non-believer. Some of the congregants
threatened to expel Tamerlan, but apparently, none of them reported him to
the authorities, since, as far as they knew, he hadn't preached or committed
any violence.
You can't expect witnesses to report every fanatical outburst to the FBI.
But when family members are repeatedly exposed to signs that a loved one is
drifting into the vortex of violent extremism, they have a duty to
intervene, or at least to alert someone. If they don't, and the fanatic
becomes a killer, they bear an awful responsibility. If they deny that
responsibility by accusing the police and the government of anti-Islamic
conspiracies, they forfeit our sympathy, our respect, and our trust. Police
your family. Police your congregation. Police your community. If you don't,
the rest of us will do it for you.
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