Photo: FBI / AP
One of the brothers from Chechnya suspected of bombing the Boston marathon once declared he “didn’t understand” Americans and had no American friends, despite living there for up to ten years.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died overnight in a dramatic shoot-out with police on the streets of Boston, said he was a Muslim who had given up alcohol and tobacco and worried about a lack of moral standards in the world.
“God said no alcohol,” he told a photographer. “There are no values anymore… people can’t control themselves.”
As of 14.45 GMT on Friday, his brother 19-year-old Dzhokhar was the subject of an intense manhunt in Boston and surrounding areas, after the brothers shot a policeman and injured a university security officer.
Both were martial arts enthusiasts who had been in the US for up to a decade, arriving as refugees and living in Cambridge, which adjoins Boston.
Tamerlan was a keen amateur boxer, and was photographed at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Centre by photographer Johannes Hirn, who posted a photo essay online called “Will Box For Passport”.
Tamerlan tells Hirn he would rather box for the US than Russia, but admits: “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them”.
The Telegraph has the full article