TORONTO — An aunt of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects said Friday the older brother recently became a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day, and she doesn’t believe the brothers could have been involved in Monday’s attack.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev had married and had a 3-year-old daughter in the U.S., Maret Tsarnaeva told reporters in Toronto.
“He has a wife in Boston and from a Christian family, so you can’t tie it to religion,” she said.
But she said the 26-year-old Tamerlan “seemingly did not find himself yet in America, because it’s not easy.”
Tamerlan was killed Thursday night during a shootout with police, and a huge manhunt was under way in the Boston area for his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar.
Tsarnaeva said she wants proof they are involved in the deadly bombing.
“We’re talking about three dead people, 100-something injured, and I do not believe, I just do not believe our boys would do that … I don’t know them in the way that they could be capable of this,” Tsarnaeva said.
She said her brother Anzor Tsarnaev had high expecations for his sons, especially Tamerlan.
She said her brother was desperate when he found out Tamerlan dropped out of his university. She said he always demanded more of his children and said Tamerlan was his favorite.
Tamerlan wasn’t a devout practicing Muslim, “but just recently, maybe two years ago, he started praying five times a day,” she said.
Tsarnaeva called both boys smart and athletic.
“Within the family, everything was perfect,” she said.
Meanwhile, in an interview broadcast on Fox News, the suspects’ father said he believed his son was framed.
The suspect’s uncle earlier urged his surviving nephew to turn himself in.
“Yes, we’re ashamed. They’re the children of my brother,” Ruslan Tsarni, 42, told a throng of reporters outside his home in Montgomery Village, Md.
“Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured and from those who left,” Tsarni said, raising his voice.
He said the older brother, Tamerlan, had become a devout Muslim about seven or eight years ago.
“When I was speaking to the older one, he started all this religious talk, ‘Insh’allah’ and all that, and I asked him, ‘Where is all that coming from?'” said Tsarni, a corporate lawyer and executive.
He said his nephews had struggled to settle themselves in the U.S. and ended up “thereby just hating everyone.”
Asked what he thought provoked the bombings, Tsarni said: “Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine of. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, it’s a fraud, it’s a fake.”
Tsarni previously told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he was not completely shocked when he learned Friday morning that the older brother was named as a suspect.
“It’s not a surprise about him,” he said. “The younger one, that’s something else.”
Tsarni, who described himself as Muslim, vehemently denied that Chechnya or Islam had anything to do with the Boston bombings.
He said his brother left the U.S. and he had not talked to him since 2009. He said they had a personal falling out but did not elaborate.
“If somebody radicalized them … it’s not my brother, who just moved back to Russia. Who spent his life bringing bread to that table, fixing cars.”
He offered his condolences to the bombing victims.
“We’re sharing with them their grief. I’m ready just to meet with them. I’m ready just to bend in front of them, to kneel in front of them, seeking that forgiveness.”