Older Boston Suspect Made Two Trips to Dagestan, Visited Radical Mosque, Officials Say

[dkf]

Two years ago, while visiting his family in the Russian region of Dagestan, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the prime suspect in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, was flagged as a potential extremist by Russian security services. The only evidence they had were his regular visits to a mosque that gets more than its share of attention from police. Since its construction in 2000, the mosque’s broad, emerald-colored dome has been the center of the region’s Salafi community, which adheres to a more orthodox brand of Islam and, over the years, has been a hangout for men killed in shootouts with Russia’s counterterrorism forces.


There is no indication that Tsarnaev, who was killed in a standoff with Boston police on Friday, was instructed or pushed toward committing any terrorist acts during his visits to the mosque on Kotrova Street. The vast majority of the mosque’s congregants likely have no connection to the region’s extremist activity, and more moderate Muslims regularly attend services there. Both of TIME’s sources said the Russian security services never observed Tsarnaev make contact with any of the known insurgent leaders or suspected terrorists who operate in Dagestan. But the sermons he heard at the mosque might have contributed to his gradual radicalization, the sources said. “The idea that America and Israel are the axis of evil is pretty typical there. He would have heard some of that,” said the source in Makhachkala. He added, however, that the extremist videos he watched online could also have been an important factor.


Tsarnaev’s apparent choice to attend services on Kotrova Street seems to have been part of his religious divergence from his family. Although his mother has said she also became more devout in recent years, the security source in Makhachkala said she was never seen at the Kotrova Street mosque, which generally holds services for men only. The family’s neighbors in Dagestan told TIME over the weekend that Tsarnaev’s father, Anzor, attended services at the more moderate main mosque in Makhachkala, on Dakhadaev Street.


One of the regulars at the mosque on Kotrova Street was Murad Lakhiyanov, one of the most famous leaders of the Islamist underground in Dagestan. In October 2005, police cornered him in a Makhachkala apartment, and after an eight-hour gun battle that included mortar fire from both sides, he was killed. By then, the mosque had already gained infamy as a haunt for local terrorists. In 2002, an explosion ripped through a May Day military parade in the Dagestani town of Kaspiysk, killing 44 people, including 12 children, and wounding 133 others. A manhunt then began for a handful of suspects, some of whom turned out to be regulars at the mosque on Kotrova Street.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/04/22/tsarnaev-in-dagestan/#ixzz2RINuxzEp

[Nye Bevan]

1. Looking more and more like standard procedure Jihad (nt)

[Phillip McCleod]

2. yet another detail adding to the emerging picture of..

..of yet one more religious zealot taking his ideology to the most ILLogical extreme.

it's easy to do when the whole world is primed to be gullible by one religion or another. it's easy to believe that the apocalypse is nigh when one is already primed to believe in the apocalypse.

i know moderate and liberal believers don't want to hear it, but religion *in general* makes religious radicals possible. if there weren't so many gullible dupes, there wouldn't be so many gullible dupes crossing the line from fundamentalism to violent extremism.

there is no true scotsman, and religious freedom has its limits. when are we going to have a rational INTERNATIONAL discussion about where those limits ought to be?

it seems to me that all theocracies ought to be subject to ongoing sanctions. by its nature theocracy is a form of totalitarianism, and that's unacceptable in the 21st century.

[KittyWampus]

3. the reason liberals don't want to hear what you say is- it amounts to bigotry and ignorance.

at this point I'm sick of arguing with stupidity.

[Phillip McCleod]

5. no i am sick of treading on eggshells when it comes to skydaddy.

When believers are ready to talk seriously, and not dismiss as bigotry, legit points about the negative influence of religious belief on society, I will be here. Until then I guess you're right.. we have nothing to talk about.

[The2ndWheel]

4. International discussions on the limits of religious freedom?

They'll go about as well, and probably worse, than international discussions on climate issues.

Ongoing sanctions...by what governing body? The UN? Those sanctions seem to only hurt the citizens of whatever nation is being sanctioned.

Just my own observation, but I always get a kick out of the 21st century type of phrase in a sentence. Oh, it's the 21st century, X, Y, and Z, here and there, shouldn't be this or that, simply because we're in some abstract idea we call the 21st century. It's never made sense to me.

[Phillip McCleod]

6. at least there are talks. \n