No terror-group ties found for 2

Muslim convert, Web seen in play

Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officers march as they depart St. Patrick's Church in Stoneham, Mass., following a funeral Mass for MIT police officer Sean Collier, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Collier was fatally shot on the MIT campus Thursday, April 18, 2013. Authorities allege that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were responsible. Law enforcement official at right is unidentified. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officers march as they depart St. Patrick's Church in Stoneham, Mass., following a funeral Mass for MIT police officer Sean Collier, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Collier was fatally shot on the MIT campus Thursday, April 18, 2013. Authorities allege that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were responsible. Law enforcement official at right is unidentified. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

BOSTON - The Boston area held funerals for two more of its dead Tuesday - including an 8-year-old boy - as more details emerged from U.S. officials and family members about how the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects possibly were swayed by an anti-American strain of Islam.

In Washington, Senate Intelligence Committee member Richard Burr, R-N.C., said after his panel was briefed by federal law enforcement officials that there is “no question” that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “the dominant force” behind the attacks, and that he and his younger brother had apparently been radicalized by material on the Internet rather than by contact with militant groups overseas.

Younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s condition was upgraded from serious to fair as investigators continued building their case against the 19-year-old college student. He could face the death penalty on charges

unveiled Monday that accuse him of joining forces with his brother, now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people at the marathon.

Martin Richard, a schoolboy from Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood who was the youngest of those killed in the April 15 blasts at the marathon finish line, was laid to rest after a family-only funeral Mass.

“The outpouring of love and support over the last week has been tremendous,” the family said in a statement. “This has been the most difficult week of our lives.”

Boston Marathon explosions

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A series of explosions at the Boston Marathon killed two people and injured several on April 15, 2013.

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A funeral was also held for Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26, whom authorities said was shot to death Thursday by the Tsarnaev brothers. A memorial service for Collier was scheduled for today at MIT, with Vice President Joe Biden expected to attend.

Public health officials say 264 people sought treatment at hospitals for injuries after the bomb blasts. About 50 were still hospitalized Tuesday.


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Authorities had been saying about 180 people were injured. The Boston Public Health Commission said the larger number includes people who delayed seeking treatment. For example, some people had ringing in their ears from the blasts and thought it might go away, but it persisted for several days.

Authorities believe that neither brother had links to terror groups. However, two U.S. officials said Tuesday that 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev - killed last week in a gun battle with police - frequently looked at extremist websites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate.The magazine has endorsed lone-wolf terror attacks.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

Family members reached in the U.S. and abroad said Tamerlan Tsarnaev was steered toward a strict strain of Islam under the influence of a Muslim convert known to the Tsarnaev family only as Misha.

After befriending Misha, Tamerlan Tsarnaev gave up boxing, stopped studying music and began opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to family members, who said he turned to websites and literature claiming that the CIA was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“Somehow, he just took his brain,” said Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., who recalled conversations with Tsarnaev’s worried father about Misha’s influence.

“You could always hear his younger brother and sisters say, ‘Tamerlan said this,’ and ‘Tamerlan said that.’ Dzhokhar loved him. He would do whatever Tamerlan would say,” recalled Elmirza Khozhugov, the ex-husband of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s sister. He spoke by telephone from his home in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The brothers, who came to the U.S. from Russia a decade ago, were raised in a home that followed Sunni Islam, the religion’s largest sect, but were not regulars at the mosque and rarely discussed religion, Khozhugov said.

Then, in 2008 or 2009, Tamerlan Tsarnaev met Misha, a heavyset bald man with a reddish beard. Khozhugov didn’t know where they met, but he believed they attended a Boston-area mosque together.

In 2010, Tamerlan Tsarnaev married Katherine Tsarnaeva - a talented artist, a good student who grew up Christian, who had changed her name from Katherine Russell after converting to Islam and dropping out of college.

Tsarnaeva, 24, has avoided the public eye since her identity became known Friday. On the rare occasions when she has emerged from her parents’ Rhode Island home, she is dressed in the traditional Muslim headscarf, a hijab, and has refused to answer questions.

Those who know her and knew her husband describe her as sweet and dedicated to Islam.

Tsarnaeva knew nothing about Islam when she met Tamerlan Tsarnaev, said her lawyer, adding that he didn’t know if marriage was a motivating factor in her conversion. The reason was that she is abeliever, he said.

The couple had a daughter and lived with her in the Tsarnaev family apartment, which was shared over the years with his mother, Zubeidat, and father, Anzor, now divorced, and Dzhokhar, said lawyer Amato DeLuca. He said Tsarnaeva rarely saw her brother-in-law there because he was living in the dorms at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

Tsarnaeva’s lawyer said she had no reason to suspect her husband of anything and was focused on supporting her family, working 70-80 hours, seven days a week as a home health-care aide. Her husband cared for their daughter when she was away, DeLuca said.

In another development, April Walton, the manager of Phantom Fireworks of Seabrook, N.H., said Tamerlan Tsarnaev bought 48 mortar shells at the store in February.

Company Vice President William Weimer said FBI agents visited the store Friday, interviewed staff members and checked its computers. He said the amount of gunpowder that could be extracted would not have been enough for the Boston bombs.

Hoping to learn more about the motives, U.S. investigators traveled to southern Russia on Tuesday to speak to the parents of the two suspects, a U.S. Embassy official said.

The trip by the U.S. team was made possible because of Russian government cooperation with the FBI investigation, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak publicly.

The parents live in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim province in Russia’s Caucasus, where Islamic militants have waged an insurgency against Russian security forces for years.

The embassy official said he could not confirm whether the U.S. investigators had already talked with the parents.

A lawyer for the family, Zaurbek Sadakhanov, said the parents had just seen pictures of the mutilated body of their elder son and were not up to speaking with anyone.

In Massachusetts, the state House turned aside a bid by several lawmakers to reinstate the death penalty in certain cases, including the murder of police officers. In a 119-38 vote, the House sent the proposal to a study committee rather than advance it to an up-or-down vote.

Meanwhile, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were briefed by the FBI and other law enforcement officials in a closed session Tuesday evening.

Afterward, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., described the two brothers as “a couple of individuals who become radicalized using Internet sources.”

“So we need to be prepared for Boston-type attacks, not just 9/11-style attacks,” Rubio said, referring to lone wolf terrorists as opposed to well-organized teams from established terror networks.

Also, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano vowed that government will incorporate lessons from the bombing.

Napolitano was the sole witness at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday in Washington to examine a proposed rewrite of U.S. immigration law.

After the bombings, some Republican lawmakers have called for stronger border control and stricter background checks for foreigners who would seek citizenship under the plan.

Also, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asked whether authorities didn’t notice the elder brother’s trip to Russia because the airline had misspelled his name on the passenger manifest. Napolitano said the system still indicated his departure.

“Yes, the system pinged when he was leaving the United States,” she said. “By the time he returned, all investigations had been - the matter had been closed.” Information for this article was contributed by David Crary, Denise Lavoie, Bridget Murphy, Bob Salsberg, Lynn Berry, Adam Goldman, Eric Tucker, Matt Apuzzo, Jack Gillum, Kate Zezima, Michelle R. Smith, Allen G. Breed, Geoff Mulvihill, Pete Yost and Eileen Sullivan of The Associated Press; by Kathleen Hunter, Roxana Tiron, James Rowley and Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/24/2013

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