Two of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Potential Jihadist Friends Are Dead

[dkf]

As investigators attempt to fill in the massive space between Tamerlan Tsarnaev, loving son and championship boxer, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the dead architect of the Boston Marathon bombing, they're looking to Russia. According to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Tsarnaev may have been linked to William Plotnikov, a Canadian "boxer-turned-jihadist" (sounds familiar) who died at the hands of Russian forces in the republic of Dagestan last year, while Tsarnaev was visiting.

Plotnikov's father described to CBC a son that was once a successful boxer and then suddenly turned to radical Islam, which also sounds very familiar. "He had lots of friends and girlfriends. Suddenly finished. No friends, no father, no mother," he said. "Only room and pray. That's it. What happened? Who can change his mind?"

Tsarnaev may have also known, or chatted online, with Makhmud Mansur Nidal, an 18-year-old militant who was reportedly "under surveillance for six months as a suspected recruiter for Islamist insurgents fighting Moscow's rule in the region." Nidal was also killed in Russia, in May 2012 during Tamerlan's six-month visit, in Dagestan's capital Makhachkala, where Tsarnaev's parents live.

"It seems that Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to Dagestan with the aim of joining the insurgents," a Russian security source told Novaya Gazeta. "After Nidal and Plotnikov were destroyed and he lost his contacts, Tsarnaev got frightened and fled." Friends or not, he eventually met the same fate.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/tamerlan-tsarnaev-jihadist-friends-are-dead.html?test=true

[gordianot]

1. Someone somewhere knows what was going on.

I do wonder if the complete story will be made public?

[Heather MC]

2. I guess Boston was his initiation.

[TheMadMonk]

3. Seems the Russians had good reason to issue a warning.

Question may be, why didn't they say why he might be a threat? Why did they only issue what seems to be a generic "heads up"?

[HiPointDem]

4. "may have" = they don't even know if these people knew each other.