h/t Shaun Appleby Thanks for the link!
Tsarnaev had gone off to the forest
It was determined that Tsarnaev came to Makhachkala at the end of January 2012 to see his father and to turn in his Russian passport. He didn’t have a return ticket. During his stay in Dagestan, Tamerlan lived in Makhachkala the entire time and only in March went for a brief period to the Chechen Republic to see his relatives in the Tsarnaevs’ native village of Chiri-Yurt.
On May 19, 2012, during a special operation [raid] in Makhachkala, [Russian forces] killed Makhmud Nidal. I spoke with a man who was present during the special operation during the negotiations about surrender: “At first he agreed to turn himself in, but after they let out the women and children, he refused. Nidal knew that the siloviki had a lot of information on him.” After the special operation, the national anti-terrorist committee published a photograph of Makhmud Nidal in the foreset with fighters who were in the Makhachkala group.
After Nidal’s death, according to operations [surveillance] information, Tamerlan moved out of his father’s apartment to the apartment of relatives and did not go out in public without extreme necessity. His Aunt Patimat even brought him food.
After two months, on July 14, 2012, eight people were killed during another special operation near the village of Utamysh in Kayakent District. Among them was William Plotnikov, who for several months before his death moved to “illegal status,” or to put it simply, went off with the fighters into the forest. And from that moment, agents lost sight of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The police came to visit his father, but the father claimed that everything was fine, that his son had returned to the USA. They didn’t believe his father, and supposed that Tsarnaev had gone off to the forest. They were made cautious by the fact that Tamerlan left without waiting to pick up his passport, the documents for which he had submitted at the end of June 2012.
It was after this story that the FSB sent their second inquiry – and now to the CIA – regarding Tamerlan Tsarnaev with a request to trace his activity and contacts in the USA and share information. But that inquiry remained without an answer as well.
“Judging from everything,” says the RDCCE official, “Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Dagestan with the purpose of linking up with the fighters. However, it didn’t work. It’s not easy, first you have to make connection with a liaison, and then go through a period of ‘quarantine’ – before accepting a person, the fighters vet him for several months. After the annihilation of Nidal and Plotnikov, having lost his ‘contacts,’ he, Tsarnaev, was frightened and `jumped'”.
Inside Tsarnaevs’ Chechen roots there is more to come in a CNN documentary.
North Caucasus to Boston: Rise and fall of the Tsarnaev brothers
(McClatchy) – Tamerlan moved to trainers at gyms across Massachusetts as he rose in the regional heavyweight class, winning a local Golden Gloves novice cup. He went on to represent Team New England in the national Golden Gloves championship tournament in 2009, but he was disqualified in 2010 because of complaints that non-U.S. citizens should not be allowed to compete. It also killed his Olympic dream.
In a video from a fight in Lowell, the pounding theme music from “Rocky” roused the crowd as Tamerlan was introduced, wearing yellow head gear, long white trunks and a blue sleeveless shirt. He circled the ring, testing. He threw a left jab. Then another. A third. Suddenly he landed a powerful right punch to his opponent’s head. Tamerlan won the round.
But some fighters mocked him for his fancy clothes and for being so high on himself. Johnathan Pabon, a sparring partner, said Tamerlan’s shoes looked like alligator, and he wore a scarf of chinchilla.
“Nobody liked him,” Pabon said. “They thought he was too cocky and self-centered. But what boxer isn’t?” Even outside the ring, his violent side – and family turmoil – was never far from the surface.
In 2007, Tamerlan confronted a Brazilian youth who had dated his younger sister, Bella, for about two years, and punched him in the face. Ana Merino, a high school friend of Bella’s, said Tamerlan did not approve because the boy was not a Muslim.
Tamerlan was “very overprotective” of his sisters,” Merino recalled. “He wanted them to date within their religion.” His other sister, Ailina, had married and moved to Bellingham, Wash. In May 2008, she complained to her mother, Zubeidat, over the phone that her husband, Elmirza Khozhugov, was cheating on her and beating her. Court records show he tried to strangle her and grabbed her hair; he pleaded guilty to assault.
Tamerlan immediately flew across the country to “straighten up the brains” of his brother-in-law, his mother said. Tamerlan “roughed up” Khozhugov, she said. Three weeks later, Ailina flew back to Boston.
On Aug. 12, 2009, Tamerlan was arrested after his then-girlfriend, Nadine Ascencao, called 911 “crying hysterically” and said he had beaten her. “Yes, I slapped her,” Tamerlan told officers who handcuffed him, according to Cambridge police reports. The case ultimately was dismissed.
By then, Tamerlan had started to explore religion and philosophy. He read Gandhi and Confucius, explored the history of Chechnya, and delved deeply into the Koran and the hadith, the sayings of the prophet Muhammad. He also began to look at Islamist websites.
“He was not a loner, but he spent so much time alone in front of his computer,” Zubeidat said. “He said to me once: ‘Mom, I don’t have friends and I don’t have enemies in America. I just don’t have time for them.'”
