During this morning's manhunt in Boston, several sources have identified the Twitter account @J_Tsar as belonging to 19-year-old suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. A cached profile photo (now replaced with picture of a lion) matches suspect photos sent out by FBI yesterday and the account has been confirmed with a high school classmate of Tsarnaev's.
Dzhokhar, who was born in Chechnya and went by the name "Jahar" or "Johar" because his real name was difficult to pronounce, has been reportedly tweeting in the wake of Monday's attacks. Most recently he retweeted Muslim scholar Mufti Ismail Menk, his own note about being "stress free" and the lyrics to Eminem's "Forgot About Dre":
Attitude can take away your beauty no matter how good looking you are or it could enhance your beauty, making you adorable.
— Mufti Ismail Menk (@muftimenk) April 17, 2013
I'm a stress free kind of guy
— Jahar (@J_tsar) April 17, 2013
Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got somethin to say but nothin comes out when they move their lips; just a bunch of gibberish
— Jahar (@J_tsar) April 17, 2013
On the day of the attack, Tsarnaev tweeted, "stay safe people":
Ain't no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people
— Jahar (@J_tsar) April 16, 2013
Earlier today, Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov issued a statement (on Instagram, of all places) criticizing how authorities handled the manhunt that led to the death of Dzhokhar's brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev. That statement, issued in Russian, blamed U.S. authorities for killing the suspect before they could determine "the extent of his guilt." Connecting the suspects to their Chechnya upbringing "is futile," Kadyrov said. "They were raised in the United States, and their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. It is necessary to seek the roots of this evil in America. The whole world must struggle against terrorism — that we know better than anyone else."
Tsarnaev's family emigrated to the U.S. from Chechnya in 2002, when younger brother Dzhokhar would have been nine or 10 years old. Tamerlan, now deceased, would have been around 16 at the time. The extent to which American culture influenced their "attitudes and beliefs" can't really be known at this point, but last spring he was on a tweeting streak, alternating sentiments of Chechen pride and lyrics from American pop music that run the gamut from Kanye and Michael Jackson to Peter Frampton and Paul McCartney:
i hold my own i got that #chechnyanpower
— Jahar (@J_tsar) March 14, 2012
a decade in america already, i want out
— Jahar (@J_tsar) March 14, 2012
maybe im amazed at the way you love me all the time
— Jahar (@J_tsar) April 10, 2012
proud to be from #chechnya
— Jahar (@J_tsar) April 29, 2012
ooh baby i love your way, everyday.
— Jahar (@J_tsar) April 29, 2012
you've been hit by a smooth criminal
— Jahar (@J_tsar) May 5, 2012
Motherland pride and Wings lyrics aside, Tsarnaev's tweets mostly appear to be the innocuous utterings of a bored high schooler. He also tweeted about working as a lifeguard because "saving lives brings me joy" and how "having your own car is sooo #clutch." Despite telling the world, or at least his twitter followers, that "drugs are a crutch for people who cant handle reality," he was apparently known among his friends for smoking copious amounts of weed:
I never would have thought that someone that smoked as much weed as Jahar would be on the News for terrorism.
— mac (@ChinksMcGee) April 19, 2013
While several classmates and people who had interacted with Tsarnaev online confirmed the @J_tsar belonged to the suspect, multiple fake Twitter accounts sprung up after his name was revealed by authorities. At least one fake account garnered over 6,500 followers with just 11 tweets, most of which were empty threats directed at Boston Police.