(Photos: AP)
SIX FEET UNDER: Killer Tamerlan Tsarnaev (inset) was buried in this Doswell, Va., grave this week. (
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Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was quietly buried in a Muslim cemetery in a small central Virginia community — stunning locals who had no idea the dead terrorist was there.
Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a police shootout on April 19, was interred Wednesday at the Al-Barzakh Cemetery, a Muslim ground in the small community of Doswell, about 15 miles outside of Richmond, officials said yesterday.
The burial was orchestrated by Virginia resident Martha Mullen, who reached out to the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond and asked the group to facilitate the burial after hearing of Tsarnaev’s body languishing for a week in a funeral home in Worcester, Mass.
Until then, protests had broken out in opposition of having the bomber’s body buried in Massachusetts, and several cities, including Boston and Cambridge, outright refused him.
“Jesus tells us ‘love your enemies’ — not to hate them even after they are dead,” Mullen said.
But the move stunned the local community — from Muslim leaders to elected officials, many who are now questioning whether they should have been consulted.
“The whole Muslim community here is furious,” said Imam Ammar Amonette, of the Islamic Center of Virginia. “It was all done secretly behind our backs. Now everybody who’s buried in that cemetery, their loved ones are going to have to go to that place.”
Local officials in Caroline County, which includes Doswell, yesterday vowed to examine whether any laws were broken in the hush-hush burial — and whether they can send Tsarnaev’s body elsewhere.
But cemetery officials defended their actions., saying, “What Tsarnaev did is between him and God.”
“We strongly disagree with his violent actions, but that does not release us from our obligation to return his body to the earth,” the officials said.
Tsarnaev died in Watertown, Mass., four days after Boston authorities said he and his brother, Dzhokhar, killed three people and injured hundreds near the Boston Marathon finish line.