A few hours before he would be shot and killed by law enforcement, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev called an uncle with whom he had not spoken in about two years. During that call, he asked his uncle for forgiveness.
From USA Today (via the Journal News in Westchester County, NY):
“He said, ‘I love you and forgive me,’ ” said Alvi Tsarnaev, who lives in Montgomery Village, Md.”We were not talking for a long time because there were some problems,” he said, without elaborating. “We were not happy with each other.”They spoke for about five minutes, he said. Tamerlan, who is Muslim, started out by saying, “Salam Aleikum,” an Arabic greeting meaning “peace on you.” He then praised his uncle for keeping up with his Muslim prayers.They talked about family. He said Tamerlan has relatives in the United States and his father is in Russia.”I told him I was praying to Allah, not drinking, not smoking, and he told me he was happy,” he said. “He was asking, ‘Did you pay your mortgage?’ I told him I was trying to pay. I asked him what he was doing. He said, ‘I fix cars, I got married, got a baby.'”
On Friday evening, the family of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife, Katherine Russell, issued a statement indicating that they are “sickened by the knowledge of the horror he [Tamerlan] has inflicted” and the family requested privacy. “In the aftermath of the Patriot’s Day horror, we know that we never really knew Tamerlane [sic] Tsarnaev,” the statement read.
There are reports of various estrangements within the family, but there has been little elaboration on the reasons for such from family members or others in the bombing suspects’ circles.
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