Boston bombing suspects’ parents cancel trip to U.S.

Boston bombing suspects’ parents cancel trip to U.S.

PanARMENIAN.Net - The parents of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects have retreated to a village in southern Russia to shelter from the spotlight and abandoned plans for now to travel to the United States, the father of the suspects told Reuters on Sunday, April 28.

Speaking in the garden of a large house, Anzor Tsarnaev said he believed he would not be allowed to see his surviving son Dzhokhar, who was captured and has been charged in connection with the April 15 bomb blasts that killed three people and wounded 264.

"Unfortunately I can't help my child in any way. I am in touch with Dzhokhar's and my own lawyers. They told me they would let me know (what to do)," Tsarnaev said in an interview in the village where he relocated with the suspects' mother.

According to Reuters, he agreed to the face-to-face meeting on condition that the village's location in the North Caucasus, a string of mainly Muslim provinces in southern Russia, not be disclosed.

"I am not going back to the United States. For now I am here. I am ill," Tsarnaev said.

He and other members of the family believe a man shown on television being led naked into a police car the night of the shootout was Tamerlan, and that the blurry footage, still widely available on YouTube, proves Tamerlan was captured alive. Boston police say Tamerlan was killed in a shootout, and the man seen being led into the car was a bystander who was briefly detained.

Anzor Tsarnaev said he raised the issue with U.S. officials who visited him earlier in the week in his home in Dagestan.

"I asked them: 'I saw my child alive, he was being put into a police vehicle alive and healthy. How come media said he was killed?' They were shocked themselves," the father said.

Although the Tsarnaev brothers have roots in Dagestan and neighboring Chechnya, neither had spent much time there until Tamerlan returned to Dagestan last year for six months.

During his interview, Anzor Tsarnaev denied Tamerlan had any contact with militants during his stay, painting an idyllic picture of his son's visit to his ancestral homeland.

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