Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (October 21, 1986 – April 19, 2013) was a Russian-born terrorist of Chechen and Avar descent who, with his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, planted pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.

The bombings killed three people and reportedly injured as many as 281 others.

The couple had two sons, with Tamerlan Tsarnaev born in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on October 21, 1986, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev born in Kyrgyzstan on July 22, 1993.

The parents also have two daughters.

Other Chechen Americans in the area apparently did not consider the American branch of the family to be fully Chechen because they had never lived in Chechnya.

As children, Tsarnaev and his brother lived in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan.

In 2001, the family moved to Makhachkala, Dagestan, in the Russian Federation.

In April 2002, the Tsarnaev parents and Dzhokhar went to the United States on a 90-day tourist visa.

Anzor Tsarnaev applied for asylum, citing fears of deadly persecution due to his ties to Chechnya.

Tsarnaev was left in the care of his uncle Ruslan in Kyrgyzstan, and arrived in the U.S. around two years later.

In the U.S. the parents received asylum and then filed for their four children, who received "derivative asylum status".

They settled on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tsarnaev lived in Cambridge on 410 Norfolk Street until his death.

The family "was in constant transition" for the next decade.

Anzor and Zubeidat Tsarnaev both received welfare benefits.

The father worked as a backyard mechanic and the mother worked as a cosmetologist until she lost her job for refusing to work in a business that served men.

According to his immigration file, Tsarnaev was admitted to the U.S. in 2003, receiving his visa at the U.S. consulate in Ankara, Turkey.

After arriving in the U.S., he attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public high school.

He emigrated to the United States in 2004 at the age of 18.

At the time of the bombings, Tsarnaev was an aspiring boxer.

Shortly after the Federal Bureau of Investigation declared them suspects in the bombings and released images of them, the Tsarnaev brothers killed an MIT policeman, carjacked an SUV, and engaged in a shootout with the police in the Boston suburb of Watertown.

According to the federal indictment, during the shootout, Tamerlan was captured but died, partly as a result of his brother driving over him.

A MBTA police officer was critically injured by friendly fire in the course of Dzhokhar's escape in the SUV.

An injured Dzhokhar escaped, but was found, arrested, and hospitalized on the evening of April 19 after an unprecedented manhunt in which thousands of police officials searched a 20-block area of Watertown.

During his incarceration, Tsarnaev's brother allegedly said during questioning that the pair next intended to detonate explosives in Times Square in New York City.

Dzhokhar reportedly told authorities that he and his brother were radicalized, at least in part, by watching lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki.

The Tsarnaev family was forcibly moved from Chechnya to the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in the years following World War II.

Anzor Tsarnaev is a Chechen, and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is an Avar.

He applied for admission at the University of Massachusetts Boston for the fall of 2006, but was rejected.

He attended Bunker Hill Community College part-time for three terms between 2006 and 2008, studying accounting with hopes of becoming an engineer.

He dropped out of school to concentrate on boxing.

In March 2007, the family was granted legal permanent residence.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (now Kalmykia), a North Caucasus unit of the Soviet Union, the RSFSR.

He was a permanent resident of the U.S., a Russian citizen, and a Kyrgyzstani citizen.

In 2007, Tsarnaev confronted a Brazilian youth who had dated his younger sister, Bella, for about two years, and punched him in the face.

A high school friend of Bella said Tsarnaev did not approve because the boy was not a Muslim.

During 2008, Tsarnaev became a devout Muslim and stopped drinking and smoking (eventually becoming an extremist a year later).

He began to regularly attend the Islamic Society of Boston mosque near his home in Cambridge.

Although the Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a longtime critic of the mosque, alleges to support "a brand of Islamic thought that encourages grievances against the West, distrust of law enforcement and opposition to Western forms of government, dress and social values," the mosque has condemned terrorism and would even later ask Tsarnaev to stop attending due to him interrupting the Friday sermon.

In May 2008, his sister said her husband was cheating on her and beating her up.