Tamerlan Tsarnaev Won’t Be Allowed to Be Buried in Cambridge
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Glenn DePriest/Getty Images(CAMBRIDGE, Mass.) — The funeral director in charge of finding a city with a cemetery willing to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev can cross Cambridge, Mass., off his list.
While there has been no formal application for a burial permit there, Cambridge City Manager Robert Healey said Tsarnaev wasn’t welcome to be buried in the American city he called home.
“I have determined that it is not in the best interest of peace within the city to execute a cemetery deed for a plot within the Cambridge Cemetery for the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev,” Healey said Sunday in a statement.
Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gun battle with police on April 19, three days after the twin bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260 at the Boston Marathon, sparking an intense manhunt until police apprehended his younger brother.
Ruslan Tsarni, Tsarnaev’s uncle, who spoke passionately after the bombing about the “shame” his nephews had brought on the family, arrived in Massachusetts this weekend to claim Tamerlan’s body. Tsarni is also arranging burial rites for his nephew, who was a devout Muslim.
Peter Stefan, a funeral home director in Worcester, Mass., told ABC’s Good Morning America on Saturday that he had been experiencing difficulty finding a plot for Tsarnaev. He said he had looked for plots in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to bury Tsarnaev, but has had no luck.
“Is he a terrorist? Sure he is a terrorist, but I can’t control what he did. But the person is dead, and burying a dead body, that’s all it is,” Stefan said.
As Tsarnaev’s younger brother Dzhokhar recovers in a prison hospital, FBI agents returned Sunday to the Cambridge, Mass., apartment where Tamerlan lived, searching the Norfolk Street home to learn as much as they can about the planning and preparation for the attack, officials said.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, allegedly told investigators that his brother was the architect of the bombing plot, and that the siblings made the bombs in the apartment Tamerlan shared with his wife, Katherine Russell.
Russell’s attorney said the woman was shocked by the bombings, but had no prior knowledge of the attacks being planned.
While ABC News has learned that the female DNA found on one of the bombs did not match Russell’s, the FBI is looking into what her husband may have said to her in a phone call just days after the bombings.
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