REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MAKHACHKALA - The father of the two Boston bombing suspects said Thursday that he is soon leaving Russia for the United States, to visit one son and lay the other to rest. Their mother said she was still thinking over whether to make the journey.
"I am going there to see my son and bury my older one," Anzor Tsarnaev said in an emotional meeting with journalists. "I have no bad thoughts, I'm not planning any bombings, I don't want to do anything. I'm not offended by anyone. I want to know the truth, what happened. I want to work it out."
Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26 years) was killed in a gun battle with police, while his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, remains hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Their parents returned last year to Dagestan in southern Russia, where the family lived briefly before moving to the US a decade ago.
US investigators have been trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was radicalized during his stay in the Caucasus in 2012. A team of investigators from the US Embassy in Moscow has questioned both parents in Makhachkala this week, spending many hours with the mother in particular over the course of two days. Tsarnaev said the questions were mostly about their sons' activities and interests.
The suspects' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, said she was still deciding whether to go. Tsarnaeva, wearing a headscarf and dressed all in black, said she now regrets moving her family to the US and believes they would have been better off in a village in her native Dagestan.
"You know, my kids would be with us, and we would be, like, fine," she said. "So, yes, I would prefer not to live in America now! Why did I even go there? Why? I thought America is going to, like, protect us, our kids, it's going to be safe."
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the Boston bombings should spur stronger security cooperation between Moscow and Washington, adding that they also show that the West was wrong in supporting militants in Chechnya.
"This tragedy should push us closer in fending off common threats, including terrorism, which is one of the biggest and most dangerous of them all," Putin said during his annual call-in show on state television.
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