Over the course of the day on Friday, details about the background of the two men suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing began to leak out. Much of it surrounded the religious radicalization of the two men. Here is a timeline based on current reporting:
2000-2001: The Tsarnaev family leaves Kyrgyzstan for Dagestan.
2001: The Tsarnaev family lives in Dagestan.
2002: The Tsarnaev family leaves Dagestan for the United States, according to one report. Tamerlan is 14 or 15 years old. Dzhokhar is eight or nine. The Tsarnaev family father, Anzov, begins working as a mechanic. His English is poor. The mother, Zubeidat, is a cosmetologist.
July 9, 2003: According to the Turkish Interior Minister, the Tsarnaev family was in Turkey for ten days.
2003: Tamerlan registers with USA boxing.
2004-2005: Anzov leaves the employ of the mechanic for whom he works. Sometime in the next few years, he leaves for Russia after getting sick.
December 2005: Uncle Ruslan Tsarni sees Tamerlan and Dzhokhar for the last time. “My family has nothing to do with that family,” he said.
2008-2009: Tamerlan is studying engineering at Bunker Hill Community College when he is profiled by photographer Johannes Hirn. In that profile, Tamerlan says he is devoutly religious, has abandoned smoking and drinking, and rips into the United States. “I’m very religious,” he explains. “There are no values anymore … People can’t control themselves.”
2009: Tamerlan fights in the Golden Gloves tournament in Salt Lake City, loses. That same year, he is arrested for assault in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend.
2010: According to the aunt of the suspects, Maret Tsarnaeva, Tamerlan fathers a 3-year-old daughter. There is no confirming evidence of this. That same year, Tamerlan tells a Boston University student magainze: “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”
2011: According to Maret, Tamerlan begins practicing Islam religiously and praying five times per day.
2011: Dzhokhar graduates from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, listed as a Greater Boston League Winter All-Star Wrestler. He goes on to the University of Massachusetts, studying to be a dentist. Dzhokhar wins a $2,500 scholarship from the City of Cambridge.
August 2012: Ashraful Rahman, a current senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, says he saw Dzhokhar at around this time during Ramadan at mosque. “”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,” said Rahman.
It is unclear when Dzhorkhar put up his Vkontakte page. His profile on the Russian Facebook, Vkontakte, confirms his religious worldview; it describes Dzhorkhar’s worldview as “Islam,” and quotes the Koran saying, “Do good ,because Allah loves those who do good.”
September 11, 2012: Dzhokhar becomes a naturalized US citizen. At this point, his brother has his green card.
2012: Zubeidat is arrested for stealing $1,600 worth of clothes from a Lord & Taylor.
2012-2013: Tamerlan posts videos to YouTube expressing sympathy for Al Qaeda philosophies. He has a video file called “Terrorists.” He shares videos of radical Islamic lectures. One video contains Arabic singing and bombs exploding, with the caption: “Then Allah will rise an army from the non-Arabs, who will be greater riders and will have better weapons than the Arabs … but their weapon will be the weapon of faith.” He is a follower of Feiz Mohammed, a radical Islamic preacher. Sometime in 2012, he travels to Russia for six months.
April 15, 2013: The two brothers allegedly set bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.