Not that the bombings had anything to do with Islam. This kind of testimony shows up the mainstream view of the political and media elites for what it is: a cynical and duplicitous attempt to keep Americans ignorant and complacent about the nature and magnitude of the threat posed by the global jihad.
“Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mother-in-law: Islam was his ‘obsession,’” by Laurel J. Sweet, Boston Herald, April 27, 2015:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team today called Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mother-in-law to the stand in the first appearance by any family member of the Boston Marathon bomber and his late co-conspirator brother.
Judith Russell testified that for Tamerlan, Islam, “became a sort of, I don’t know, obsession.”
The defense said in their opening statement today that they would paint a portrait of Tamerlan as “obsessed with jihad.”
Russell is mother of Katherine “Katie” Russell, Tamerlan’s widow. Their daughter is now 4 1/2.
Russell, who had never publicly spoken since the bombings, described Tamerlan as transforming into a radical, growing his hair and beard, and said her daughter “was really cut off from a lot of things she was involved in before.”
Katherine Russell “started to learn about Islam,” her mother said. “That was a change. She hadn’t been religious as a child.” She owned the book “Islam for Dummies.”
Two years after the bombings, Katherine Russell — who dropped out of Suffolk University in her junior year to marry Tamerlan when she became pregnant — is still a practicing Muslim.
Russell said she vocally opposed Tamerlan’s “selfish” solo trip to Russia in 2012, which lasted six months, and during which, according to the defense, he became radicalized.
And, the mother-in-law said, she found Tamerlan’s constant blather about politics “annoying.” Although “he had a certain charm,” she said, “I was not pulled in.”
She was happy the couple took a break after Tamerlan cheated on Katie, but Russell lamented she couldn’t keep them apart.
Three days after the bombing, the FBI released photos of their bombing suspects.
“I saw the pictures. I’d never met Dzhokhar and I didn’t think it was him (Tamerlan),” Russell testified, beginning to weep.
That night, before authorities had put names to their faces, the Tsarnaevs fled in a bloody crime spree, killing MIT officer Sean Collier and engaging in a violent Watertown showdown that left MBTA officer Dic Donahue wounded.
These days, Russell said, her daughter “is healing from this experience. She is getting her life together and is lighter in spirit and more like the Katie we knew.”…
Bruck said witnesses will include relatives of the Tsarnaev brothers from Russia, who will testify through an interpreter.
They will give context to “why Tamerlan set himself and his brother on this terrible course … Tamerlan was obsessed with jihad,” Bruck said. And they will tell the court “how fanatical and unreasoning Tamerlan seemed to be” during a visit abroad in 2012….