Now that the fog of yesterday is starting to lift a bit, there are some really fabulous longer pieces coming out about the brothers Tsarnaev (Tamerlan and Dzokhar).
For the best in biographical details, you can't beat the Boston Globe's story on them.
That story includes this mysterious nugget.
Gym owner Allan said that Tamerlan had once introduced him to an American, Brendan Mess, whom Tamerlan described as his best friend.
Two years ago, Mess and two other men were brutally killed in a Waltham apartment where they were found by police with their throats slit and their bodies covered with marijuana. The murders remain unsolved.
Tsarnaev hadn’t been to Allan’s Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center in years, instead going to another nearby boxing gym.
Until this month.
Allan, who is currently traveling in Thailand, said he got an e-mail within the past week saying Tsarnaev showed up at the gym acting rude and disrespectful, using other people’s equipment, walking on the mats with his shoes.
The other great piece is by The New Yorker's David Remnick, who fits their story into the broad sweep of Chechen history in Russia.
Gregory Shvedov, the editor of a Web site based in Moscow called Caucasian Knot, visits the Caucasus regularly and studies both the jihadist movement and the Russian government and military’s draconian behavior in the region. He was hardly shocked that two ethnic Chechens, raised largely in the U.S. but with a strong attachment to their homeland, might carry out such an act on a “soft target” like the marathon. “These days there are social networks, and people make their decisions from them,” he said from Moscow. “I would not be surprised if they had another life over social media. What kind of videos are they watching? What kind of lectures and YouTubes about jihad?” If Tamerlan did what he is suspected of doing, he might not have got his education, or instructions, entirely through digital means. On January 12, 2012, he flew from New York to Moscow, a regular target of Chechen rage; he didn’t return until seven months later.
Read the full Globe story here and the New Yorker piece here.
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