'Exorcist took bomber's brain'

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, mastermind of the Boston bombings, had been influenced by radical Islamic websites and a red-bearded convert called Misha. Picture: Splash Australia Source: The Sunday Telegraph

RADICAL Muslim websites and a mysterious convert known only as Misha turned Tamerlan Tsarnaev into a timebomb who brainwashed his younger brother into helping kill and maim innocents.

As Dhzokhar Tsarnaev, 19, recovers in hospital and reveals more information about the deadly Boston Marathon bombing attack to the FBI, a clearer picture is emerging of why two emigre brothers turned against their adopted country to plant crude pressure cooker bombs in the crowd lining the route last week.

The blasts killed three and wounded more than 260. At least 50 are in still in hospital, some with appalling injuries.

Two days later, the brothers went on the run, killing a policeman and hijacking a car before a dramatic chase through the suburbs of Boston  culminated in a gunfight with police.

Tamerlan was shot dead. Dzhokhar escaped and hid in a boat in a suburban back yard, only to be flushed out and captured last Saturday (AEST).

But why did they do it?

Family members reached in the US and abroad by The Associated Press said Tamerlan was steered toward a strict strain of Islam under the influence of an Armenian Muslim convert known to the Tsarnaev family only as Misha.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has confessed to being behind the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed three and wounded more than 200.  

After befriending Misha, Tamerlan gave up boxing - he had once wanted to represent the US -  stopped studying music and began opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to family members, who said he turned to websites and literature claiming that the CIA was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"Somehow, he just took his brain,'' said Tamerlan's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland, who recalled conversations with Tamerlan's worried father about Misha's influence.

Tsarni also claimed claimed that the brothers' mother, Zubeidat, allowed Misha into their house to give one-on-one sermons to Tamerlan over the kitchen table during which he claimed he could talk to demons and perform exorcisms.

"Misha was telling him what is Islam, what is good in Islam, what is bad in Islam," added Elmirza Khozhugov, the former brother-in-law of the Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, who sat in on some of the conversations.

"This is the best religion and that's it." Khozhugov told the Associated Press.

"Misha was important. Tamerlan was searching for something. He was searching for something out there."

In this picture taken by Bob Leonard about 10-20 minutes before the Boston Marathon blast, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Suspect Two) and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Suspect One) watch runners pass by.

"You could always hear his younger brother and sisters say, 'Tamerlan said this,' and 'Tamerlan said that.' Dzhokhar loved him. He would do whatever Tamerlan would say,'' recalled Elmirza Khozhugov, the ex-husband of Tamerlan's sister. He spoke by telephone from his home in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The brothers, who came to the US from Russia a decade ago, were raised in a home that followed Sunni Islam, the religion's largest sect, but were not regulars at the mosque and rarely discussed religion, Khozhugov said.

Then, in 2008 or 2009, Tamerlan met Misha, a heavyset bald man with a reddish beard. Khozhugov didn't know where they met but believed they attended a Boston-area mosque together.

Republican Sen. Richard Burr said after the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed by federal law enforcement officials there is "no question'' that older brother Tamerlan  was "the dominant force'' behind the attacks, and that the brothers had apparently been radicalised by material on the Internet rather than by contact with militant groups overseas.

Authorities believe neither brother, both Russian-born ethnic Chechens, had links to terror groups.

However, two US officials said Tuesday that Tamerlan  frequently looked at extremist websites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate. The magazine has endorsed lone-wolf terror attacks.

Injured peoples lie on the footpath after a bomb exploded near the Boston Marathon finish line. Picture: AP Photo/MetroWest Daily News, Ken McGagh

Hoping to learn more about the motives, U.S. investigators traveled to southern Russia on Tuesday to speak to the parents of the two suspects, a U.S. Embassy official said.

The parents live in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim province in Russia's Caucasus, where Islamic militants have waged an insurgency against Russian security forces for years.

A lawyer for the family, Zaurbek Sadakhanov, said the parents had just seen pictures of the mutilated body of their elder son and were not up to speaking with anyone.

In Washington, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were briefed by the FBI and other law enforcement officials at a closed-door session Tuesday evening.

Afterward, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio described the two brothers as ``a couple of individuals who become radicalized using Internet sources.''

An attorney representing the wife of deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect says, she is "trying to come to terms" with Marathon bombing. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.

"So we need to be prepared for Boston-type attacks, not just 9/11-style attacks,'' Rubio said, referring to lone-wolf terrorists as opposed to well-organized teams from established terror networks.

Investigators were also focusing on the trip that Tsarnaev made to Russia in January 2012 that has raised many questions.

His father said his son stayed with him in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, where the family lived briefly before moving to the US a decade ago. The father had only recently returned.

"He was here, with me in Makhachkala," Anzor Tsarnaev told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"He slept until 3pm, and you know, I would ask him: 'Have you come here to sleep?' He used to go visiting, here and there. He would go to eat somewhere. Then he would come back and go to bed."

No evidence has emerged since to link Tamerlan Tsarnaev to militant groups in Russia's Caucasus.

On Sunday, the Caucasus Emirate, which Russia and the US consider a terrorist organisation, denied involvement in the Boston attack.

The Institute for Strategic Studies says the Caucasus Emirate is a radical Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda and other international groups.

It aims to establish an Islamic state in the North Caucasus, but has gradually evolved as it was radicalised by an influx of Islamic extremism. While continuing and intensifying the separatist movement's attacks against the Russian state, the CE has also violently sought the implementation of Sharia law, engaged in sectarian violence and, in recent years, been implicated in various European terrorist plots.

Anzor Tsarnaev said they also travelled to neighbouring Chechnya.

"He went with me twice, to see my uncles and aunts. I have lots of them," the father said.

He said they also visited one of his daughters, who lives in the Chechen town of Urus-Martan with her husband. His son-in-law's brothers all work in the police force under Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, he said.

Moscow has given Kadyrov a free hand to stabilise Chechnya following two wars between federal troops and Chechen separatists beginning in 1994, and his feared police and security forces have been accused of rampant rights abuses.

What began in Chechnya as a fight for independence has morphed into an Islamic insurgency that has spread throughout Russia's Caucasus, with the worst of the violence now in Dagestan.

In February, 2012, shortly after Tamerlan Tsarnaev's arrival in Dagestan, a four-day operation to wipe out several militant bands in Chechnya and Dagestan left 17 police and at least 20 militants dead.

In May, two car bombs shook Makhachkala, killing at least 13 people and wounding about 130 more. Other bombings and shootings targeting police and other officials took place nearly daily.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's mother said he was questioned upon arrival at New York's airport.

"And he told me on the phone, 'imagine, mama, they were asking me such interesting questions as if I were some strange and scary man: Where did you go? What did you do there?'" Zubeidat Tsarnaeva recalled her son telling her at the time.

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