Media Boston Bomber Suspects' Dad Calls on Son to Surrender

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Boston Bomber Suspects' Dad Calls on Son to Surrender

The father of suspected Boston Marathon bomber called on his son today to give up peacefully, but warned the U.S. that if his son is killed "all hell will break loose."

Anzor Tsarnaev spoke to ABC News from his home in the Russian city of Makhachkala as Boston police carried out an intense dragnet for his son Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, survived a running gun battle with police during the night that left an MIT security officer dead and a Boston cop badly wounded. His older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in the shootout.

The father said he spoke to his sons by phone earlier this week. "We talked about the bombing. I was worried about then," Anzor Tsarnaev said.

He said his sons reassured him, saying, "Everything is good, Daddy. Everything is very good."

The elder Tsarnaev insisted that his sons were innocent, but said he would appeal to his son to "surrender peacefully."

"Give up. Give up. You have a bright future ahead of you. Come home to Russia," the dad said.

The father warned, however, "If they killed him, then all hell would break loose."

"If they kill my second child, I will know that it is an inside job, a hit job. The police are to blame," the father told ABC News. "Someone, some organization is out to get them."

The father said his two daughters, ages 22 and 24, live in New York.

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is now described as willing to die in a battle with police, was more striking for taking acting classes, advanced placement courses and being a star athlete with lots of friends in high school.

"He never seemed out of the ordinary at all," high school classmate Sierra Schwartz told "Good Morning America" today. "This is not someone who seemed troubled in high school or shy. He was just one of us. It's very weird."

Steven Owens told ABC News, "I met him when I was in seventh grade and he was just a great kid. He was fun to be around. Very studious, very smart. I don't remember a time when he was ever having trouble in school. He was a great athlete. Great to be around."

Owens said Tsarnaev "always had a positive attitude," but had expressed some political opinions in school.

"He always thought the war [Iraq, Afghanistan] was stupid," Owens said. "He didn't enjoy the idea of war. We didn't really talk about it much. The only time it ever really came up was when we were learning about it in school."

When Owens first saw authorities' photos of Tsarnaev, he wasn't positive it was him since he hadn't seen him in a few years.

"I started looking through my yearbook because I thought I recognized him and there he was," Owens said. "I was just so surprised."

Students at UMass Dartmouth are being evacuated from their dorms, following confirmation that Tsarnaev lived in the Pinedale residence hall.

PHOTOS: Boston Bombing Suspect Manhunt

The search for Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass., has effectively shut down Boston and its surrounding cities today, including Watertown, Mass., where his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in an overnight shootout.

Boston is on lockdown and police are engaged in a large operation in Watertown.

Law enforcement sources tell ABC News the suspects are believed to be brothers are of Chechen ethnicity and their family came from the semi-autonomous Russian province of Dagestan. A law enforcement source confirmed that at least one of the brothers is a legal permanent resident in the United States.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgyzstan, a law enforcement source citing State Department documents told ABC News. The brothers are believed to have spent time there.

Schwartz went to Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School with Dzhokhar, who is now the target of a massive police dragnet.

She recognized him immediately when she saw his photo released by authorities.

"I was like, 'Wow, that looks just like Dzhokhar…," she said. She then noticed that his Facebook page had been deleted.

Schwartz knew he went to college, but did not remember where. She last saw him in Cambridge in the summer of 2011 before starting college. She was not aware that he had a brother.

"He was a great athlete. He did well. I think he won a scholarship for it," Schwartz said. "This is very unexpected….this is out of the ordinary. Completely shocking."

MORE: 1 Boston Bombing Marathon Suspect Dead, 1 'Armed and Dangerous,' Police Say

Schwartz is still reeling from the news that her former classmate is the most wanted person in America.

"When I woke up, it's like I'm living a nightmare right now. It can't be described," she said. "I just really hope they catch him."

"We all knew him for four years and that's something a lot of people can't say," she added.

Tsarnaev's father Anzor Tsarnaev lives in Makhachkala, the capital of Republic of Dagestan.

"My son is a true angel," Anzor Tsarnaev told the Associated Press. "Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here."

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, identified as Suspect 1, was killed overnight after exchanging fire with police officers, during which multiple explosive devices were detonated, authorities said.

The Monday bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three people and injured more than 170.

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Here's an interview with the Suspects' Mother.

 

[Samstwitch]

The Mother spoke with her older son on the phone during his stand-off with Police right before he was killed...and STILL she denied her son's involvement in the bombings. Sheesh! She is the one who got her sons involved with Islam.

Suspects' Mom Says Dzhokhar Would Have Obeyed Older Brother

The mother of the two men suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing says her younger son would have faithfully obeyed his older brother, a devout Muslim who investigators now fear may have become radicalized.

The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, had become an increasingly pius Muslim in recent years, partly at the urging of his mother, she said.

The younger son, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was a sophomore at UMass-Dartmouth where he had a reputation for partying and drugs.

The mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, described Tamerlan as "a person of strong will," a "leader" who could influence people.

Tamerlan's influence was perhaps felt most by his younger brother Dzhokhar.

"They loved each other. What Tamerlan was said was law for Dzhokhar. That's how I raised them. What the elder brother says, the younger brother has to do. That is according to Islam," the mother told ABC News in a phone call today.

"We were all very connected. My boys were very close to me, and especially Tamerlan," she said.

She and Tamerlan spoke almost daily, and when they both lived in the United States he would visit every weekend. The last time they spoke it was during the suspects' tense standoff with police, during which Tamerlan was killed and his younger brother Dzhokhar was badly wounded, but captured alive.

Tamerlan told her what was happening and as she began to cry and scream the line went dead. She frantically searched for the television remote control. Sometime later, her daughter called to say Tamerlan had been killed.

Tsarnaeva refused to believe her sons could have committed acts of terror. She accused the U.S. government of framing the brothers because they were afraid of Tamerlan.

"They wanted to eliminate Tamerlan and Dzhokhar was just nearby because he was driving him to the university," she said. She also denied that they owned or possessed any guns.

The mother also seemed to endorse conspiracy theories that the U.S. government was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, suggesting the same people killed her sons.

"He was a good candidate to get rid of," she said.

Tsarnaeva said she urged Tamerlan to embrace Islam in 2008, concerned about his drinking, smoking, and pursuit of girls. She said he began to read more about it on the internet. The mother said she also urged him to quit boxing because she told him Islam prohibits hitting someone in the face.

Tsarnaeva praised Tamerlan's wife, an American-born woman named Katherine Russell who converted to Islam and began to wear a headscarf.

"She is a serious, good, American girl who converted to Islam as if she had always been a Muslim. We all love her a lot," she said. The two had a daughter who is now a toddler.

Russell chose the name Karima after converting to Islam, the mother said. She said her son approved, telling his wife, "If you like it, it's a good name."

In 2011, the FBI investigated Tamerlan at the behest of an undisclosed foreign government, which feared he was planning to travel there to link up with militant groups. The bureau said in a statement on Friday that their investigation yielded nothing of concern.

The mother said that since Friday's standoff with police, law enforcement agents have visited family members in the United States and confiscated cell phones and computers.

Dzhokhar, meanwhile, was described as less religious. His mother said they had high hopes for him because he was a good student with a scholarship. She said he had a big heart, describing how he and Tamerlan cried when their cat got sick.

The mother described an extremely close family, but admitted that her embrace of Islam in recent years was a source of tension with her husband. A few years ago, at his insistence, the couple divorced in the United States.

She said her efforts to convince Tamerlan to give up boxing on religious grounds had strained her relationship with her husband, himself a former boxer, who wanted him to continue.

After the father moved to Dagestan last year as his health failed, the mother followed a few months later, saying she was homesick. The two reconciled, deciding they couldn't live without each other, she said. The grief from losing their sons, she said, has brought them even closer together.

Tamerlan, who lived here in Dagestan, a restive region in southern Russia that is home to an Islamist uprising, with his family for a few months when he was younger, returned for a visit for the first time in February last year. He stayed until July.

His mother said he entered Russia on his Kyrgyz passport (he holds an American green card) and applied for a Russian passport while he was here.

She said Tamerlan visited family and traveled neighboring Chechnya, also home to Islamic militants, with his father to visit relatives. She denied that he met with any militants or extremists during the visit, pointing to a statement from a regional militant group on Sunday saying they had no role in the Boston Marathon attacks.