04/20/2013, 00.00
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Boston, suspected attackers may have trained in Chechen Islamic school

The United States celebrates the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a Chechen immigrant and brother of the main suspect in the attack on the Boston Marathon. The Russian news agencies dig into the past of the two young men. Tamerlan, the eldest, who was killed yesterday in a firefight, had a page on Youtube with links to sites close to Islamic terrorism.

Boston (AsiaNews / Agencies) - A Youtube site linked to pages glorifying terrorism, a certificate of attendance at a school in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan (Chechnya), and several references to the Islamic religion: this is the profile of the Tsarnaev brothers, prime suspects in the Boston massacre on April 14 last, both defined by the press as "devout Muslims". The revelations have already spread on U.S. media and arrived in Russia reported by Interfax news agency. The Moscow based network has investigated the recent past of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 years old, killed yesterday by U.S. security forces and Dzhokhar, his younger brother, 19 years old, captured by police last night, after a massive man hunt. The young man was wounded and had taken refuge in a boat in Watertown. In a statement to the nation, President Obama said that the U.S. would not give in to terrorism "but there are still so many questions to be answered."

Both of Chechen origin, but born in Kyrgyzstan, the two brothers had immigrated to the United States in 2003 and lived in Cambridge, a suburb of Boston. The eldest, Tamerlan, was a former engineering student. In 2012 he opened a page on Youtube with his name. According to the data of the account in the Russian language, the young man navigated suspicious sites, close to radical Islam. Among the  films uploaded, many touch on "conversion to Islam" and "Islamic terrorism." From 1999 to 2001, the young man is reported to have attended a school in Dagestan. In his application he is reported to have made reference to his devotion to Islam. However, the latter source is yet to be verified.

Instead Dzhokhar attended a medical school in one of the universities in Boston. The characteristics of the two suspects have sparked headlines that already blame the attack on Islamic extremism of a Caucasian matrix. Last night, Ed Davis, head of the Boston Police pointed out that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was considered very dangerous: "We think he is a terrorist. We believe that this is a man who has come here to kill".

Despite police statements calling for caution,  the wider public has  jumped to hasty conclusions. Today, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on the media not to speculate on the past of the two brothers and their alleged and still not certain ties with Islam to avoid deflecting investigations onto ideological prejudices rather than the facts.

The allegations of the U.S. media on Caucasian terrorism, was immediately condemned by Chechen prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov, The Russian republic is one of two areas of Muslim majority, along with Dagestan. He pointed out that the suspects lived only for a few years in Makhachkala, while they were mainly educated in the United States. "According to Kadyrov," the roots of this evil are to be found in the United States and nowhere else. "

After the so-called "pacification" of Chechnya, Dagestan has become the most unstable among the republics of the Russian Caucasus, where after installing the pro-Russian Kadyrov in Grozny, Moscow continues to fight Islamist insurgents who are fighting for the creation of an emirate. In recent years a real bombing campaign has been waged against religious officials, in response to their explicit criticism of radical Islam in local mosques, at the request of the Kremlin.

 

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