Washington, May 11 (IANS/RIA Novosti) The body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried in a Muslim cemetery in a small town in Virginia known for a sprawling, popular amusement park.
Tsarnaev’s body was interred Thursday at the Al-Barzakh cemetery in Doswell after numerous cemeteries in his adopted home state of Massachusetts refused to allow the burial.
Tamerlan, 26, was killed in a shootout with police April 19, four days after a pair of explosions near the finish line of the marathon killed three people and injured more than 260 others. He and his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, quickly emerged as suspects in the case.
A Virginia woman, Martha Mullen, reached out to several cemeteries and finally received a commitment from the Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia to grant a plot for Tsarnaev’s burial, US News & World Report reported on its website Friday.
Mullen passed the information to police in Worcester, Massachusetts, where Tsarnaev’s body was being held in a funeral home, which contacted the Islamic organisation to make arrangements.
“Jesus tells us ‘love your enemies’,” Mullen said in a statement circulated Friday to US media by the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond.
“Not to hate them even after they are dead.”
Located 40 km north of Virginia’s capital Richmond, and 134 km south of Washington D.C., Doswell is well known as the home of the Kings Dominion amusement park.
Investigators believe the Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who were living in Massachusetts, planted two pressure-cooker bombs laden with shrapnel and explosives near the finish line.
Dzhokhar was captured hours after his brother’s death, and is being held in a prison hospital.
The medical examiner released Tamerlan’s body May 1, but the funeral home in Worcester that accepted it quickly became the site of community protests.
Police said they spent thousands of dollars for security at the home but cemeteries and communities refused to accept the body for burial.
–IANS/RIA Novosti
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