Moscow: Two brothers identified as suspects in the Boston marathon bombings grew up in a Russian region near Chechnya but have had little to do with the area for years, a spokesman for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Friday. Police in Boston identified the two suspects as 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Kadyrov`s spokesman Alvi Karimov said the brothers lost connection with Chechnya many years ago.
"The people suspected of committing crimes in Boston have nothing to do with Chechnya," Xinhua quoted Karimov as saying.
The Tsarnaev family left Chechnya for Kazakhstan and moved to the US from there, he said.
The two brothers were born and raised in the Russian city of Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, according to Temirmagomed Davudov, their former school teacher.
"The two brothers and their two sisters used to study in our school for one year," said Davudov, director of Makhachkala`s No.1 public school.
He said the brothers left Dagestan in 2002 while still minors.
Russian bloggers discovered accounts of the younger brother, Dzhokhar, on Russian-language social networks and said the suspected bomber described himself as a person who "only cares of career and money".
Police in Boston shot and killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev but his younger brother remains at large.
Three people were killed and about 180 others injured in the bombings during the Boston Marathon earlier this week. IANS