Family Of Boston Bombing Suspects Express Shock, Outrage

BOSTON (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The family of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects expressed shock and outrage Friday.

The uncle of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed by authorities early Friday, called his nephew a "loser" and said he'd not been in touch with him in a while.

"Absolutely shocked me, absolutely devastated me by this," Ruslan Tsarni told CBS Boston.

"The older brother, Tamerlan... I would call him a 'loser,' you know?" Tsarni said. "I heard he's not been in school, I'm not even sure what he's been doing with him. I just cut with him."

"I say what I think is behind it: Being losers. Not being able to settle themselves, and thereby just hating everybody who did," Ruslan Tsarni, in Maryland, said.

"I say Dzhokhar, if you're alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured and from those who left, ask forgiveness from these people," a visibly animated and upset Tsarni said. "He put a shame on our family, the Tsarnaev family. He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity... . Turn yourself in!"

"I respect this country. I love this country. This country, which gives chance to everybody else to be treated as a human being, just to be human being, just to feel yourself human being, that's what I feel about this country," Tsarni said. "If I even slightly be aware that they were involved I'd be the first one to bring them into responsibility, as an uncle."

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Earlier, Tsarni told CBS Boston Tamerlan "deserved" to die, telling CBS Boston "They do not deserve to exist on this earth."

A West New York woman who claimed to be the sister of the bombing suspects told the Newark Star Ledger she doesn't believe it.

"I'm hurt for everyone that's been hurt," Alina Tsarnaeva said. "I'm sorry for the families that lost their loved ones the same way I lost a loved one."

Tsarnaeva pleaded for privacy.

"I'm not OK, no-one is OK. It's very shocking news," Tsarnaeva said, adding that she hadn't seen her brothers for a long time. "[Dzhokhar] is an amazing child."

"They are smart. My older brother was smart. I don't know what got into them. I have no idea what got into them," Tsarnaeva said.

The FBI was later seen removing a computer from Tsarnaeva's home, the Associated Press reported.

From Makhachkala, Russia, the father of the suspects told the Associated Press said "my son is a true angel" and "an intelligent boy."

"They were set up, they were set up!" Anzor Tsarnaev said. "I saw it on television; they killed my older son Tamerlan."

Speaking to reporters in Toronto, an aunt of the suspects said Tamerlan had recently become a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day.

"I don't know them in the way that they could be capable of this," Maret Tsarnaeva said. She also told reporters Tamerlan was married and had a 3-year-old daughter.

"He has a wife in Boston and from a Christian family, so you can't tie it religion," she said.

A law enforcement source told CBS News Dzhokhar became an American citizen on Sept. 11, 2012. He arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa in April 2002 and sought asylum in September of that year. There's no word yet on whether Tamerlan, 26, was an American citizen.

The brothers appear to have lived in various parts of Russia and the former Soviet Union, CBS 2's Tony Aiello reported. Their roots trace back to Chechnya, a mostly Muslim region plagued by violence as part of a struggle for independence from Russia. The region has had two full-scale wars with Russian forces since 1994.

"There are terrorists from that country and they're living here in Boston," Congressman Peter King told 1010 WINS. "I don't know whether they're acting on their own or through al Qaeda but my concern is that they were able to live in the United States for a year and plan this attack."

Both brothers seemed to fit in well in America, at least on the surface, Aiello reported.

Tamerlan had a YouTube channel which showed he liked videos about Chechnya and Islam. Tamerlan was a Golden Gloves boxer and the subject of a photo essay by photographer Johannes Hirn. Tamerlan told Hirn "I'm very religious" and "there are no values anymore. People can't control themselves."

"I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand them," Tamerlan told Hirn.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was arrested for assaulting a girlfriend in the summer of 2009, according to police records.

Dzhokhar was also an athlete - a wrestler. He graduated in 2011 from Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School.

A classmate who spoke with CBS Boston anonymously said she was shocked.

"Dzhokhar was so friendly, so I wouldn't connect A and B that he was a terrorist, or hurt a fly, even," she said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had a page on a Russian social networking site Vkontakte, listing his worldview as "Islam" and his interests as "career and money."

The friend who spoke with CBS Boston said she had no inkling of any radical or terrorist tendencies.

"He would say once in a while that he was just here or there, but other than that he was just seen as a normal American to me," she said.

A spokesman for Chechnya's leader said the family left Chechnya long ago and went to Central Asia, then moved to Dagestan, a Muslim republic adjacent to Chechnya that has been the site of a sporadic insurgency for more than a decade.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attended School No. 1 in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. The principal's secretary at School No. 1, Irina Bandurina, told the AP that Tsarnaev left for the U.S. in March 2002.

When in the United States, the suspects went to Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

"I can't believe this, it's not possible, my nephews can't do, like, this stuff. No way," a man named Alvi Tsarni, who identified himself as the uncle of the suspect. "It's crazy. It's not possible. I can't believe it. Myself, when I heard it on TV news, I said 'Who can do all this stuff?' It's crazy, it's unbelievable."

A high school friend of the suspects told CBS Boston Dzhokhar was "just a normal American kid."

The city of Cambridge announced two years ago that it had awarded a $2,500 scholarship to Dzhokar Tsarnaev, who was listed as a senior at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a highly regarded public school whose alumni include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and NBA star Patrick Ewing.

Ruslan Tsarni told The Associated Press that the men lived together near Boston and have been in the United States for about a decade. They traveled here together from the Russian region near Chechnya.

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