One of the brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston bombings was in possession of right-wing American literature in the run-up to the attack, BBC Panorama has learnt.Excuse me as I try not to laugh. Is the BBC really trying to argue that the Tsarnaev brothers became radical right wingers in....Cambridge? C'mon.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev subscribed to publications espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories.
He also had reading material on mass killings.
Until now the Tsarnaev brothers were widely perceived as just self-styled radical jihadists.
Panorama has spent months speaking exclusively with friends of the bombers to try to understand the roots of their radicalisation.
The Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens, spent their early years moving around a troubled region of Russia torn by a violent Islamic insurgency.
But for the last decade they lived in Cambridge, near Boston.
The brothers' friends told us Tamerlan turned against the country and became passionate about Islam after becoming frustrated when his boxing career faltered because he did not have American citizenship.
Their friends wouldn't all speak openly because they were afraid of being wrongly viewed as associated with terrorism.
The Tsarnaev brothers were raised in radical Chechnya by their radical mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who can't come back to the U.S. due to an outstanding warrant for her arrest. Shortly after the Boston bombing, Zubeidat told CNN she didn't care that her son was dead and screamed Allahu Akbar at a reporter during an interview.
“If they are going to kill him. I don’t care. My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care if my youngest son is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this. And, I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu Akbar!“
And as a reminder from Tamerlan's brother, Dzhokhar, who helped carry out the bombing.
Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators his older brother Tamerlan was the driving force behind last week's attack and that no international terrorist groups were behind them, a U.S. government source said Monday.Nice try, BBC.
Preliminary interviews with Tsarnaev indicate the two brothers fit the classification of self-radicalized jihadists, the source said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wounded and held in a Boston hospital, has said his brother -- who was killed early Friday -- wanted to defend Islam from attack, according to the source.