Aunt of Boston bombing suspects suspicious of her nephews’ involvement

TORONTO – Maret Tsarnaev is shocked that her “athletic” and “smart” nephews Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could have been involved in the tragic events of the Boston Marathon bombing. She won’t believe it, she says, until she gets better evidence.

Speaking to reporters outside of her Etobicoke apartment, said she was “suspicious” that her two nephews could be involved in the bombing.

“How could this do this, for what? For the sake of what? What beliefs? What prompted them to this?” Tsarnaev said. “What could be the reason to go out and kill innocent people? You have to have a motive, you have to fight for some idea. As far as I know them, they don’t have any ideas.”

She said she suspects the event was “staged,” adding that the public has very little evidence of her nephews’ supposed guilt.

“We don’t have evidence but the whole world have pictures of these two boys that have been hunted and Tamerlan, god forbid, he is dead,” Tsarnaev said.  “Government agencies do stuff.”

Maret said the boys’ family life growing up was “perfect” and both children were intelligent and athletic. Their father had high expectations of them, Maret said, and was upset when he felt they failed to succeed.

Maret said her nephews moved to the United States as refugees in April 2002 after fleeing Kyrgyzstan.

She filed the petition for their refugee status.

For more than a decade, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan lived in Cambridge with their parents and two sisters.

Tsarnaev said Dzhokhar was “kind of a sweet boy” and had recently dropped out of university.

Tamerlan was an accomplished amateur boxer and, in a 2009 photo essay, mused about making Team U.S.A.

Tamerlan also had a “good Christian” wife, Maret said and young children.

She added that she does not know whether either of the suspects have strong religious values.

“So we cannot tie it up to religion, either. Because having the closest person in your house, standing by you, and a daughter of that union, how can you hate that religion and be fine with the other religion?” she said.

Tamerlan was killed early Friday morning during a shootout with police in Boston.

Maret spoke to reporters for almost an hour. She refused to consider her nephews were capable of bombing the Boston Marathon.

“I do not believe, I just do not believe that our boys would do that.”