The Boston terrorist have been identified as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass., and his brother a second bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, according to NBC News, who was found with an IED on his body. The brothers are of Chechen origin, according to NBC, a volatile southern Russian republic.
Tsarnaev came to America as a child with his family as refugees after fleeing Chechnya for Kazakhstan. Dhokhar Tsarnaev appeared to have posted links to Islamic and pro-Chechnyan independence sites on his social media page.
Chechen Islamist were responsible for the Beslan school hostage massacre in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation. It is by far one of the worst massacre of a school and children in history. Chechen Islamist murdered 334 people, including 156 children.
A late-night police chase and shootout last night has left one marathon bombing terrorist dead and another on the run. The terrorist killed one police officer in the shootout, and another was seriously wounded during the violent spree.
The mayhem began at approximately 10:20 p.m. Thursday when police said the bombing suspects robbed a 7-Eleven store in Cambridge. Minutes later, police said, the men shot and killed an MIT campus officer responding to the robbery call. The terror suspects then carjacked a Mercedes-Benz with the driver inside and fled, eventually letting driver go. They were then spotted in Watertown where they exchanged dozens of rounds of gunfire with patrol officers.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot by police and brought to Beth Israel Medical Center. He arrived at the hospital under cardiac arrest with multiple gunshot wounds and blast-like injuries to his chest. The second suspect fled on foot, leading to the tense manhunt that is still underway at this hour.
Tsarnaev’s father, reached by the AP in Russia by phone, said his son was a “true angel” and wonderful student.
At sunrise, Gov. Deval Patrick ordered a shutdown of all public transit and residents on the edges of Boston to stay indoors as a massive manhunt for the second suspect was underway. The entire city in Boston was under a shelter in place order by late Friday morning.
Chechen terrorism may be less familiar to most Americans than that carried out by fighters from the Middle East or Afghanistan and Pakistan, but Chechen separatists have fought a long and bloody war against Russia in the region’s long war of independence from Moscow.
Chechnya, a small, predominately Muslim region in the Caucuses between Georgia and the Caspian Sea in Southern Russia, has been a hotbed of separatist violence since the start of the First Chechen war in 1994 — the same year that Tsarnaev was reportedly born. As Joshua Yaffa, a Moscow-based journalist wrote, The “whole generation knows only conflict.”
While the Russian military fought a brutal war against Islamic fighters in the region that reportedly included extrajudicial disappearances and killings, Islamist terrorists carried out a campaign of terror and violence against innocent Russian civilians all over the country.
Dokka Umarov, an Islamist Chechen separatist leader, is one of Russia’s most wanted men and has earned the name of “Russia’s Osama Bin Laden” for his involvement in numerous attacks. Al Qaeda has also been loosely tied to Chechen terror groups.
In 2001, three Chechens hijacked a Russian airline with 174 people on board and forced it to land in Saudi Arabia, where commandos stormed the plane and freed over 100 hostage.
In 2002, some 50 Chechen militants seized a theater in Moscow, taking 850 hostages and demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from their region. At least 130 hostages died when Russian authorities pumped in knock out gas in an attempt to drive out the terrorists, but ended up killing civillians as well.
In early September 2004, militants sent by Chechen separatist leader Shamil Basayev took over the grade school in Beslan, murdering scores of children and adults for Islam.
More recently In 2010 Chechen Islamist murdered at least 40 people and 100 injured when terrorists bombed two Moscow Metro stations.
