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theweek wrote:
Who is 'Misha,' the Armenian Muslim who radicalized Tamerlan Tsarnaev?
The Associated Press talks to the family of the alleged Boston bombers, and uncovers clues about a mysterious Islamist Svengali

On Tuesday, multiple newspapers and other news organizations reported that the surviving bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, confessed to the crime and said that his older brother Tamerlan — killed last Friday in a violent shootout with police — was the mastermind. Unidentified government sources said that the brothers were "self-radicalized" jihadists, acting alone out of anger over the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Associated Press has uncovered one tantalizing detail that suggests Tamerlan's self-radicalization had an important supporting character: Misha. The single name comes from at least two family members who say they were once close to the Tsarnaev brothers: The now-famous Uncle Ruslan Tsarni and Elmirza Khozhugov, the 26-year-old ex-husband of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar's sister Aliina.

The Tsarnaev family was nominally Sunni Muslim, but never very religious, say the AP's Adam Goldman, Eric Tucker, and Matt Apuzzo.

Then, in 2008 or 2009, Tamerlan met Misha, a slightly older, heavyset bald man with a long reddish beard. Khozhugov didn't know where they'd met but believed they attended a Boston-area mosque together. Misha was an Armenian native and a convert to Islam and quickly began influencing his new friend. [AP]

Misha is a very common name in Russia — a shorter form of Mikhail — but come on, "there can't be that many bald, red-bearded Armenian Muslims in the Cambridge area," says Dan Amira at New York. Still, the AP has been unable to locate him after days of sleuthing, and if he's on the FBI's radar, they're not talking. What else do we know about this mysterious Svengali?

Britain's Daily Mail says Misha is "around 30" and is probably "based in a mosque that was a short drive from Cambridge." NBC News' Michael Isikoff — who calls the bearded convert "Mischa" — reports that Tamerlan started falling under the Armenian's spell as early as 2007, and he provides this juicy detail, from Uncle Ruslan: "Mischa presented himself as an 'exorcist' who specialized in 'removing demons from people's bodies.'"

Even without the exorcism and demon-removal, Misha is the strangest detail in this already bizarre story, says Trudy Rubin at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

We all know that converts can be more zealous than those born to a faith, but an Armenian native who converted to a radical brand of Islam? As the world knows, Armenian Christians suffered their own holocaust at the hands of Muslim Turks early in the 20th century, during the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. [Philly Inquirer]

National security writer Laura Rozen speculates on Twitter that Misha sounds like "the kind of mole Russia plants to keep [an] eye on emigre communities of concern," and could even be the source that tipped off Russia to Tamerlan's conversion to radical Islam in 2011, which prompted Russia's call to the FBI. "Coming from ex-police state, shouldn't [the] Tsarnaevs [have been] suspicious of [an] Armenian convert to Islam preaching 9/11 conspiracies at their table?"

Whoever he is — assuming he exists — Misha's influence over Tamerlan appears to have been profound. "Somehow, he just took his brain," Tamerlan's uncle Tsarni tells the AP. Tsarni says that once Misha came on the scene, Tamerlan stopped listening to him and even his own father. Khozhugov, the former brother-in-law, agrees:

When Misha would start talking, Tamerlan would stop talking and listen. It upset his father because Tamerlan wouldn't listen to him as much.... He would listen to this guy from the mosque who was preaching to him. [AP]

Misha reportedly told Tamerlan that music isn't kosher in Islam, so Tamerlan stopped making and listening to music and dropped out of music school. He also started reading both radical Islamist publications as well as Alex Jones' conspiracy-oriented Infowars website. Khozhugov says Tamerlan even tried to get a copy of the 1903 Russian anti-Semitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claims that Jews are plotting to take over the world.

"Misha was important," Khozhugov tells the AP. "Tamerlan was searching for something. He was searching for something out there." Now, lots of people are searching for Misha.

alphacat wrote:Then, in 2008 or 2009, Tamerlan met Misha, a slightly older, heavyset bald man with a long reddish beard.

rayman612 wrote:Possible reporter confused armenian w albanian?

buzzfeed wrote:


WASHINGTON — Alex Jones is not surprised that the media is reporting that Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a fan of his Infowars website, he told BuzzFeed on Tuesday.

"It's just standard," Jones said. "Anyone you talk to is familiar with my show. When I go out in public, half the people I meet in this country, and in other countries too, say they listen to my show. The show is bigger than the mainstream media admits."

Jones — whose site has peddled conspiracy theories about the Boston Marathon bombing and suggested that Tsarnaev is innocent — conceded that Tsarnaev "may have actually been a listener."

"He could be a listener," Jones said. "It could be true. I've talked to the family and most of them are listeners. My show is anti-terrorism and my show exposes that most of the events we've seen have been provocateured."

The AP reported on Tuesday that Tsarnaev "took an interest" in Infowars and was also interested in getting a copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the anti-Semitic fraud that purports to show a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

"I've seen this before," Jones said. "The federal government trying to connect me to tragedies. That's the media and the government's own conspiracy theories."

Jones compared the situation to when Richard Andrew Poplawski, a Pittsburgh man who killed three police officers in 2009, was shown to be a conspiracy theorist who frequently visited the Infowars website.

"It's standard for them to talk to people, go through computers, and any time someone's done something bad, they connect it to us," Jones said. In the case of Poplawski, he said, Infowars eventually showed they had nothing to do with him: "We went and showed that he was a white supremacist who hated me and was attacking me."

Jones said that he had spoken with an aunt of the Tsarnaevs on the record and other family members off the record.

"They're scared to death," he said. "That whole family is genuinely shocked."

"They think it's a setup," Jones said, adding that "the State Department openly funds radical Islam in Dagestan."

Jones said the bombing was one of a number of plots "hatched" by the FBI, and Chechen militants, among others, have seized on his claims, which are not supported by evidence, to make the case for a sweeping conspiracy behind the deadly blasts.

He also claimed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's throat wound had been inflicted by the authorities, calling it "that special throat surgery they did."

cloquet wrote:I would like an official explanation on the presence of Craft International contractors.

test recordings wrote:How exactly did the feds work out who the suspects were?

test recordings wrote:How exactly did the feds work out who the suspects were?

Phigure wrote:

test recordings wrote:How exactly did the feds work out who the suspects were?

one of the victims (the one who had both his legs blown off in that wheelchair photo) woke up after surgery and wrote down (paraphrasing) "saw the guy put the bag down". he described him to the fbi and they reviewed footage and found him