Parents of Boston Terrorists Cancel U.S. Trip

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN NORTH CAUCASUS, Russia (Reuters) —
Anzor Tsarnaev during an interview with Reuters in Russia’s North Caucasus, Sunday. (REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov)
Anzor Tsarnaev during an interview with Reuters in Russia’s North Caucasus, Sunday. (REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov)

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

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.

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,” said Tsarnaev, pacing nervously in the garden at sunset in the quiet village set in rolling hills. Tsarnaev said he suffered from high blood pressure and a heart condition.

Tsarnaev had said in the North Caucasus province of Dagestan on Thursday that he planned to travel to the U.S. to see Dzhokhar and bury his elder son, Tamerlan, who was killed during a manhunt four days after the bombings.

In Sunday’s interview he said he had decided to move away from the family home in Dagestan to the new location because he wanted to keep a low profile.

Dressed in a black shirt and black trousers, he passionately defended his sons’ innocence, saying they had nothing to do with Islamist extremists.

“I feel hopeless. We are simple people. We are trying to understand. We are attacked from all sides,” he said. “I don’t know whether I should talk or stay silent. I don’t want to harm my child. … ”

Caucasus Roots

The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens who lived in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan and in Dagestan before emigrating to the United States with their children. The parents returned to Dagestan two years ago, and Tamerlan spent the first half of 2012 there.

The suspects’ mother, Zubeidat, was with Anzor Tsarnaev in the village but did not wish to speak. “She is ill, she is shocked, she is depressed. She lost her children,” Tsarnaev said.

Although the Tsarnaev brothers have roots in Dagestan and neighboring Chechnya, neither had spent much time there.

The father said he had no hope that Tamerlan’s body would be released by the U.S. authorities to be buried in his homeland.

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