US: a free country importing terrorists
The suspect still at large. On a scholarship, he got naturalized on September 11, 2012. He posted online links to Islamist videos
“A car goes by with a Chechen, a Dagestani, and an Ingush inside. Who is driving? The police.” However, what happened yesterday in Boston is not funny at all, really, from the identification of the two terrorists, brothers, who carried out the attack to the marathon, to the violent death of the eldest one, to the siege of Boston, and more bloodshed, but that was a joke the perpetrator of the massacre, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, posted to his own page on the Russian language social media site VK. His “World view” is listed as Islam, as well as his “Personal priority” as “career and money”. He posted links with pictures of fighters in the Syrian civil war against Bashar Assad, and to an Islamic webpage that reads “There is no God but Allah, let that ring out in our hearts”. Against the backdrop a Jihadi salad, dressed with humor: is this perhaps the reason why a nineteen year old boy turned into a mass murderer, and he even led his brother to carry out a sort of replay of the attack the next day, killing a 26 year old” police officer and leaving on the floor in his gateway the corpse of his brother, Tamerlan, a 29 year old with boxing aspiration killed by police?
Shortly, we will learn everything regarding the Islamist turn taken by the two dramatic characters in the frenzied US, which for the first time after September Eleven, has to take another bitter sip of undiscriminating danger, of impotence, of fear, although in retrospect the FBI did show stunning promptness in identifying the perpetrators. Dzhokhar, as shown in the picture released by the police, which urged the entire Bostonian population to take shelter at home in order to avoid his savagery, as he was also armed by a suicide bomber’s belt, is a lovely and cute nineteen year old with tangled hair and innocent eyes. He had arrived to the US in 2002 from the Chechen poverty, and he surely ignored back then he would have moved an attack to the American dream. He went to primary school in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, a province in Russia that borders Chechnya. He reveals a sense of humor, he even posted a video entitled “tormenting my brother” which shows Tamerlan, his dead brother, imitating the accents of different Caucasian ethnic groups, like Borat, his favorite movie. In 2011 he received a USD 2,500 scholarship, an encouragement to love his new hosts and fellow citizens. A college mate, a shocked brunette with a ponytail, defines him as “quiet”: he always looked relaxed, he would come to parties and he was good at sports at the Cambridge Medical Institute, an average student. Yet everything had already been written online, in his pictures, in his repeated credo.
At times, personal beliefs can not only lead to more freedom, but to its nemesis, too: we are not able to accept it, as herein lies the constant dilemma between security and freedom of opinion we face now and forever.He looked up at Tamerlan, his eldest brother, as his role model, his biography of a sport guy testifies he was drawn to Islam, as documented by the current time’s diary, i.e. the Internet, that nothing conceals from us: he was dutiful, he did not have any American friends as he didn’t understand them, he did not take his T-shirt off so not to attract girls; yet as a good boxer, he hoped to be selected for the United States Olympic team.
Indeed, this is the way terror works: it is the surrounding society, that it aims to erase, to nurture it. The most appalling prove is a picture showing Dhzokhar, in a white cap which later helped identify him, standing behind the crowd which is his deadly target. He is probably placing his backpack packed with explosives on the floor. In the first row in his close proximity Martin Richard, the eight year old boy killed by the 19 year old terrorist, was standing. The only emotion felt by this nineteen year old young man, who nonchalantly walks away willing to kill the boy, as well as many other innocent people, was ideological fervor. Same as Mohammed Atta, who before leading the attack to the Twin Towers was involved in a sophisticated group based in Dusseldorf, where he had studied. This group was planning restoration works of antique Egyptian monuments, like one of the similar groups Shahzad Tanweer or Mohammed Sadique Khan, the group which rocked an attack to the London underground and busses; they all were so impeccably British, with a fascination for cars, sport, English life, like many other terrorists who lived in Italy, studying or working, before setting off to Afghani training camps in order to embrace several attacks.
Basically, none of the most relevant terrorist was a reject, a dropout, marginalized in the Western country that hosted them for their training. Dzhokhar was close to his friends, such a nice kid who lived at the Cambridge campus. A school mate remembers his as a wrestling champion always willing to help others, someone who would always lend a hand, and volunteering with children with learning disabilities. “An average American boy”. He had received the US citizenship only on September 11, 2012: promptly, he made good use of it.