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One was a boxer who liked Russian rap videos and once said, “I don’t have a single American friend.”
One was a boxer, one a wrestler. One favored alligator shoes and fancy shirts, the other wore jeans, button-ups and T-shirts.
The other, an all-star high school wrestler, listed “Islam” as his worldview on a Russian social media page and was described by a neighbor as a “very photogenic kid” who had “a heart of gold.”
The younger one — the one their father described as “like an angel” — gathered around him a group of friends so loyal that more than one said they would testify for him, if it came to that.
As a picture has begun to emerge of the two brothers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who are suspected of carrying out the bombings at the Boston Marathon, it is difficult to distinguish them from the millions of young people who come to the United States to forge a future. The authorities are scrambling to determine how they might have evolved into terrorists who would plant powerful bombs in a crowd of innocent people.
The older one, who friends and family members said exerted a strong influence on his younger sibling, once told a photographer, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”
The Tsarnaevs are believed to be of Chechen heritage and to have emigrated from Kyrgyzstan or another country in the region with their family to the United States in 2002 after living for some time in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, in Russia. A government official confirmed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11, 2012, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a green card.
A kaleidoscope of images, adjectives and anecdotes tumbled forth on Friday to describe Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the two brothers suspected of carrying out the bombings at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and gravely injured scores more.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pronounced Joe-HARR tsar-NAH-yev) graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in 2011, where he was listed as a Greater Boston League Winter All-Star wrestler. That year, he won a $2,500 scholarship awarded to 35 to 45 promising students by the City of Cambridge.
What no one who knew them could say was why the young men, immigrants of Chechnyan heritage, would set off bombs among innocent people. There was no shortage of theories — commentators speculated about radicalized young Muslims, angry Chechens and a host of other possible explanations. But by the end of the day they were still just theories.
Dzhokhar might have done well academically in high school, but according to a university transcript reviewed by The New York Times, he was failing many of his college classes. The transcript shows him receiving seven failing grades over two semesters in 2012 and 2013, including F’s in Principles of Modern Chemistry, Intro to American Politics, and Chemistry and the Environment. According to the transcript, Dzhokhar received a B in Critical Writing and a D and D-plus in two other courses.
The Tsarnaevs came with their family to the United States almost a decade ago from Kyrgyzstan, after living briefly in the Dagestan region of Russia. Tamerlan, who was killed early Friday morning in a shootout with law enforcement officers, was 15 at the time. Dzhokhar, who was in custody Friday evening, was only 8.
San, 22, a former classmate at the university who would identify himself only by his first name, said that Dzhokhar had told him that he was struggling in some courses.
In America, they took up lives familiar to every new immigrant, gradually adapting to a new culture, a new language, new schools and new friends.
“He was talking about how he wasn’t doing as good as he expected,” San said. “He was a really smart kid, but having a little difficulty in college because going from high school to college is totally different.”
Dzhokhar, a handsome teenager with a wry yearbook smile, was liked and respected by his classmates at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where celebrities like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon had walked the halls before him. A classmate remembered how elated he seemed on the night of the senior prom. Wearing a black tuxedo and a red bowtie, he was with a date among 40 students who met at a private home before the event to have their photos taken, recalled Sierra Schwartz, 20.
San said that he would be willing to testify on Dzhokhar’s behalf, if it came to that.
“He was happy to be there, and people were happy he was there,” Ms. Schwartz said. “He was accepted and very well liked.”
“I feel like all of his friends would do that,” San said.
A talented wrestler, he was listed as a Greater Boston League Winter All-Star. “He was a smart kid,” said Peter Payack, 63, assistant wrestling coach at the school. In 2011, the year he graduated, was awarded a $2,500 scholarship by the City of Cambridge, an honor granted only 35 to 40 students a year.
In high school, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was known to participate with a handful of other students in Muslim prayers during the school day. In his junior year, he was part of a group of 10 or so students who would hold a midday prayer service in an empty classroom on Fridays that would last roughly a quarter of an hour.
But while life seemed easy for Dzhokhar, for Tamerlan it seemed more fraught.
Mahmoud Abu-Rubieh, 17, a student at the high school, said he had known Dzhokhar for almost three years as a friend and a wrestling teammate. He said Dzhokhar dressed “like any other student at our school,” favoring jeans or khakis, button-ups and T-shirts.
A promising boxer, he fought in the Golden Gloves National Tournament in 2009, and he was noticed by a young photographer, Johannes Hirn, who took him as a subject for an essay assignment in a photojournalism class at Boston University. “There are no values anymore,” Tamerlan said in the essay, which was later published in Boston University’s magazine The Comment. “People can’t control themselves.”
“I never heard him talk about politics,” Mr. Abu-Rubieh said. “He didn’t really bring up anything like that.” He said the last time he saw Dzhokhar was about three months ago, when he stopped by wrestling practice.
Anzor Tsarnaev, the brothers’ father, who returned to Russia about a year ago, said in a telephone interview in Russia that his older son was hoping to become an American citizen — Dzhokhar became a naturalized citizen in 2012, but Tamerlan still held a green card — but that a 2009 domestic violence complaint was standing in his way.
“We exchanged a greeting,” Mr. Abu-Rubieh said. “He said it was nice to see that I continued to wrestle. If I wanted to convey any message it would be that he was a kind student, that many people respected him, he had many friends and was active in our school.”
“Because of his girlfriend, he hit her lightly, he was locked up for half an hour,” Mr. Tsarnaev said. “There was jealousy there.” And Tamerlan Tsarnaev was interviewed by the F.B.I. in 2011 when a foreign government asked the bureau to determine whether he had extremist ties, according to a senior law enforcement official.
Ashraful Rahman, 17, a senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, said that he and two other friends recognized Dzhokhar’s photo on television on Thursday night and that one of them called the F.B.I. tip line.
Yet Dzhokhar admired and emulated his older brother, some classmates said, to a degree that in hindsight seemed worrisome.
He said he could not believe that Dzhokhar, whom he met two years ago, could have been involved in the bombing.
Peter Tean, 21, a high school wrestling teammate, said that he thought Dzhokhar’s intense interest in rough—and-tumble sports came from a desire to be like his brother.
“He would never come across as someone who would do anything like this,” Mr. Rahman said.
“He’s done these violent sports because his brother’s a boxer,” Mr. Tean said. “He really loves his brother, looks up to him.”
He and Dzhokhar have much in common, he said. Both were wrestlers, both enjoyed boxing and both were Muslim. They would occasionally meet at the mosque in Cambridge a few blocks from their school, he said.
Dzhokhar’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, 42, also spoke of the influence his older brother had over him, saying of Tamerlan in a telephone interview, “He could manipulate him.”
Dzhokhar’s closest friends were a group known among their classmates as “stoners,” Mr. Rahman said. He described Dzhokhar as “laid back” and assumed that he was born in the United States because he did not speak with an accent.
In Cambridge, where Dzhokhar lived in the third floor unit of a caramel-colored wood-frame triple-decker on Norfolk Street, the brothers were often seen together. It is a multicultural neighborhood where hardware stores and butcher shops mix with cafes and Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants. Neighbors said that people were constantly coming and going at the apartment and that they were uncertain who lived there and who was just visiting. Sometimes they saw people from the unit in the backyard. Tamerlan was fond of doing pull-ups on the trellis, they said.
Mr. Rahman said he last saw Dzhokhar in August, near the end of Ramadan, during prayers at the mosque.
Mr. Tsarni said that on the night before he was killed, Tamerlan had called Mr. Tsarni’s older brother. “He said to my brother the usual rubbish, talking about God again, that whatever wrong he had done on his behalf, he would like to be forgiven,” said Mr. Tsarni, who lives in Montgomery Village, Md., outside of Washington. “I guess he knew what he had done.”
“Regardless of whether you knew him as well as I did, as someone who wrestled with him, hung out and chilled with him or whether you were people who saw him the hallway, he was always the same — a generally nice guy,” Mr. Rahman said, adding that Dzhokar was a hard-working student and an even harder-working wrestler.
Both brothers had a substantial presence on social media. On VKontakte, Russia’s most popular social media platform, Dzhokhar described his worldview as “Islam” and, asked to identify “the main thing in life,” answered “career and money.” He listed a series of affinity groups relating to Chechnya, where two wars of independence against Russia were fought after the Soviet Union collapsed, and a verse from the Koran: “Do good, because Allah loves those who do good.”
When he was not wrestling, Mr. Rahman said, Dzhokhar “was not some testosterone-ridden jock or anything like that — just a cool guy.”
Mr. Tsarnaev, the father, said that Tamerlan would take his younger brother to Friday Prayer, but dismissed the idea that Dzhokhar had become devout, saying that they sometimes caught him smoking cigarettes.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev (pronounced tam-arr-lann tsar-NAH-yev), who died after a shootout with law enforcement officers early Friday morning, was said to be studying engineering at Bunker Hill Community College four or five years ago when a photographer, Johannes Hirn, chose a young boxer as the subject of an essay for a Boston University photojournalism class.
“Dhzokhar listened to Tamerlan, of course, he also listened to us,” he said. “From childhood it was that way. He had his own head on his shoulders, he was a very gifted person. He had a gift of kindness, calmness, fairness — you understand, goodness? ”
In the essay, the subject, who is believed to be Tamerlan, was quoted as saying that he had become devoutly religious, having abandoned smoking and drinking. He sounded alienated from Russia, saying that he would not want to box on the Russian team unless Chechnya achieved independence. The essay was later published in a university magazine, The Comment, according to Peter Southwick, director of the photojournalism program, who taught the class.
Mr. Tsarnaev said that the family had come to the United States fleeing from war.
“There are no values anymore,” Mr. Hirn quoted him as saying. “People can’t control themselves.”
In Kyrgystan, they were part of a Chechen diaspora that dates back to 1943, when Josef Stalin deported most Chechens from their homeland and over concerns they were collaborating with the invading Nazi Army. Most returned to Chechnya in the 1950s, after the death of Stalin and lifting of the deportation order, but some stayed.
In the essay, Tamerlan confessed a love for the movie “Borat” and showed off his pointed shoes — “I"m dressed European-style,” Mr. Hirn quoted him as saying.
The deportation was a searing, and in some cases, radicalizing experience. Among the former diaspora in Kyrgyzstan was the first rebel president of Chechnya in the post-Soviet period, Dzhokhar Dudayev, said Edil Baisalov, a former presidential chief of staff in Kyrgyzstan.
In the caption of one photo, showing his muscled upper body, he said that he did not usually take his shirt off in front of women. “I’m very religious,” he said.
Adnan Z. Dzarbrailov, the head of a Chechen diaspora group in Kyrgyzstan, said in a telephone interview that the Tsarnaev family lived near a sugar factory in the small town of Tokmok, about 70 kilometers, or 40 miles, from the Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The last member of the family left years ago, he said. He described them as “intelligentsia” and said that Dzhokhar and Tamerlan’s aunt was a lawyer.
The brothers lived on the third floor of a caramel-colored wood-frame triple-decker on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, a multicultural neighborhood not far from Inman Square, a pleasant shopping area, where hardware stores and butcher shops are side by side with cafes and Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants. Neighbors said that people were constantly coming and going at the apartment, and that they were uncertain who lived there and who was just visiting. Sometimes they saw people from the apartment gathering on the front lawn. A man they believed to be Tamerlan was fond of doing pull-ups on the trellis out front, they said.
Yet that history does little to explain how the brothers became wanted criminals in a horrific act of terrorism, their images captured on grainy surveillance tape and broadcast across the nation.
Matt Stuber, who lives in a building next door, said he occasionally saw Dzhokhar driving a green Honda Civic. Other neighbors described him as quiet and said he sometimes did not return greetings on the street.
Gilberto Junior, who owns an auto body shop in Somerville, just saw them as “regular kids,” albeit wealthy ones with a taste for expensive cars.
He did become friendly with Larry Aaronson, a retired social studies teacher who lived a few houses from the Tsarnaev family on Norfolk Street.
So it did not especially alarm him when Dzhokhar rushed in on Tuesday, the day after the bombing, and said he needed his car immediately, never mind that the repairs had not been done and the white Mercedes wagon had no bumper and no tailights.
Mr. Aaronson said he often saw Dzhokhar around the neighborhood but had not seen him recently. He believed that Dzhokhar might have gone off to college.
The younger Tsarnaev brother seemed nervous, he said. He was biting his nails and his knees were bending back and forth a bit — it occurred to Mr. Junior that he might be on drugs.
“He was gracious,” he said of the younger Tsarnaev brother. “He told me he was from Chechnya, and I asked him what that was like, and he never expressed any bitterness toward Russia or his situation.”
“At the time I didn’t think about anything,” Mr. Junior said. “How could I judge him? I knew that he was nervous
He added, “This comes as a total shock.”
Reporting
was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr., John Eligon, Adam B. Ellick and Dina Kraft from Cambridge, Mass.; Ellen Barry from Moscow; Andrew E. Kramer from Yekaterinburg, Russia; Julia Preston from New Haven, Conn.; and Emily S. Rueb from New York.
Both young men had a substantial presence on social media. On Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social media platform, Dzhokhar described his worldview as “Islam” and, asked to identify “the main thing in life,” answered “career and money.” He listed a series of affinity groups relating to Chechnya, where two wars of independence against Russia were fought after the Soviet Union collapsed, and listed a verse from the Koran, “Do good, because Allah loves those who do good.”
In a telephone interview, Ruslan Tsarni, 42, one of the brothers’ three uncles, said that on the night before he was killed, Tamerlan called Mr. Tsarni’s older brother. “He said to my brother the usual rubbish, talking about God again, that whatever wrong he had done on his behalf, he would like to be forgiven,” said Mr. Tsarni, who lives in Montgomery Village, Md., outside Washington. “I guess he knew what he had done.”
He added: “The boys call themselves Muslims, but they are not. These are bastards, monsters and hypocrites falsely using the name of God. They never followed a good code of behavior or morals to be Muslims.”
Mr. Tsarni said that his middle brother, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar’s father, had moved back to Dagestan about a year ago with his wife.
Tamerlan seemed to control his younger brother, he said. “He could manipulate him,” Mr. Tsarni said.
Mr. Tsarni said in the interview that the two brothers had struggled to make a meaningful and responsible life for themselves in the United States.
“They are losers who could not find their place,” he said. “They did not study and work the way they should have, and they had hate for people around them.”
He further stated, “They never followed a good code of behavior or morals.”
Mr. Tsarni said that he lost contact with the older brother in 2009 or 2010, and the younger one in 2006.
He contended that his brother worked hard to give his sons a good life and that they were corrupted into carrying out an “incomprehensible” act of violence by someone outside of the family.
“Someone was manipulating and using them,” Mr. Tsarni said of his nephews. “If they said they came up with this idea on their own, I would never believe it.
The family is part of a Chechen diaspora that dates back to 1943, when Josef Stalin ordered that most of Chechnya’s population be moved to Central Asia over concerns that the Chechens were collaborating with the invading Nazi Army. Most Chechens returned in the 1950s, after the death of Stalin and the lifting of his order, but some did not. The Chechens who remain in Kyrgyzstan are concentrated in a steppe region on the Kazakh border, near the town of Talas.
The move was a searing, and in some cases, radicalizing experience. Among those sent to Kyrgyzstan was the first rebel president of Chechnya in the post-Soviet period, Dzhokhar Dudayev, said Edil Baisalov, a former presidential chief of staff in Kyrgyzstan.
Irina V. Bandurina, secretary to the director of School No. 1 in Makhachkala, Russia, said the Tsarnaev family left Dagestan for the United States in 2002 after living there for about a year. She said the family — parents, two boys and two girls — had previously lived in Kyrgyzstan.
She said that Dzhokhar had been in first grade at School No. 1 and that Tamerlan attended school in Makhachkala through the eighth grade. She said she did not know them personally.
Although the Tsarnaev family is believed to have come to the United States in 2002, they were in Turkey on July 9, 2003, according to Muammer Güler, the Turkish interior minister, and left the country 10 days later from the capital, Ankara. There was no information on the family’s next destination, the minister said.
Adnan Z. Dzarbrailov, the head of a Chechen diaspora group in Kyrgyzstan, said in a telephone interview that the Tsarnaev family lived near a sugar factory in Tokmok, a town about 40 miles from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The last member of the family left years ago, he said. He described them as “intelligentsia” and said an aunt of the accused bombers was a lawyer.
Sultan Tsarnaev, the brothers’ grandfather, died in an accident in Tokmok in 1980 when a propane tank he was carrying exploded, according to Mr. Dzarbrailov and Uzbek Aliyev, a Chechen living in Tokmok. An uncle, Anwar Tsarnaev, studied at a university in Bishkek with Mr. Aliyev.
“They were good students; they were good people,” he said of the uncle and aunt. Both brothers eventually emigrated from Kyrgyzstan, he said.
Reporting was contributed by Ellen Barry from Moscow; Andrew Kramer in Yekaterinburg, Russia; Serge F. Kovaleski and Katharine Q. Seelye from Boston; John Eligon, Adam B. Ellick, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Dina Kraft from Cambridge, Mass.; Abby Goodnough from Washington; Julia Preston from New Haven, Conn.; and Emily S. Rueb and from New York.
