Ruslan Tsarni, uncle of the suspected Boston Marathon bombing suspects, speaks to reporters in Montgomery Village, Maryland (Getty Images)
Alvi Tsarni, the uncle of the two brothers suspected of carrying out Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon, said in a television interview that the brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev “don’t deserve to live on this earth.”
Tsarni, 42, lives in Montgomery Village, Md., and told reporters from WBZ and other stations that the brothers moved to the United States from Kyrgyzstan in 2000, but that he had not seen them since 2009.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed this morning in Watertown, Mass. in a shootout with police this morning, a few hours after a security guard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was shot dead. Authorities believe the Tsarnaev brothers are responsible. In the television interview, Tsarni said Tsarnev “deserved it” when asked about his nephew’s death this morning. He also referred to at least one of his nephews as a “loser.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is the target of a massive manhunt that is currently shutting down the entire city of Boston, along with the suburbs of Watertown, Cambridge, Waltham, Newton, and Belmont.
Tsarni expressed visible remorse that members of his own family are being implicated in Monday’s terrorist attack. “I just wish they never existed,” he said. “It’s crazy. It’s not possible. I don’t believe it. When I heard this on TV, I thought ‘Who can do this stuff?'”
Tsarni also offered to lead reporters to the home of his brother—believed to be another uncle of the Tsarnaevs—and proceeded to give out an address listed under his own name, according to Maryland property records. Phone calls to Tsarni were not returned.
UPDATE, 11:46 a.m.: Another uncle of the suspects, Ruslan Tsarni, used a gaggle of television cameras to tell Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to give himself up to the some 10,000 law enforcement officials currently pursuing him across the greater Boston area. “Turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims,” said Tsarni, who lives in Montgomery Village, Md.
Earlier Friday, reporters interviewed Alvi Tsarni, Ruslan Tsarni’s brother and another of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncles.
Ruslan Tsarni spoke with clear outrage about his nephews’ alleged actions, hoping to distance them from both his family, religion, and ethnicity, repeatedly referring to the suspects as “losers.” He identified his family, who emigrated to the United Sates from Kyrgyzstan in the early 2000s, as ethnic Chechens. Tsarni said that the Tsarnaev settled in Cambridge, Mass., and that their father moved back to Russia a few years ago.
“He put a shame on the Tsarnaev family,” Tsarni said of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who remains at large in a manhunt centering around Watertown, Mass. (Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed early Friday morning in a firefight with police in Watertown, after the brothers allegedly killed an MIT police officer.)
“He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity,” Tsarni continued. “Of course we’re ashamed. They are children of my brother, who had little influence over them.”
Tsarni also tried to separate Monday’s bombings from Islam, which is the dominant religion among Chechens. “Any claim that this has something to do with Islam is a fraud,” Tsarni said.
In a statement published on Instagram, Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya who is closely allied with Russia, criticized the operation to apprehend Tsarnaev.
View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.