Analyzing Motives Behind the Boston Marathon Attack

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Boston Marathon Attack: Perpetrators’ Motives, Backgrounds, and Influence On April 15, 2013 a catastrophic event unexpectedly occurred which changed the life of many individuals and left a landmark for terror attacks in U.S. history. On this date of the Boston Marathon (around 2:49 P.M.) two pressure-cooker bombs detonated approximately twelve seconds apart from one another. This explosion resulted in the death of three spectators, amputated sixteen, and injured around two-hundred and sixty more. With the basic facts being stated, the focus of this analysis is to examine and interpret the motives and backgrounds of the perpetrators. The perpetrators consisted of only two brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (nineteen years of age at the time) and Tamerlan Tsarnaev …show more content…

The Tsarnaev brothers are both Chechen-Americans but grew up in different areas with slightly different lifestyles. Older brother, Tamerlan, was born in Elista, Russia while younger brother, Dzhokhar, was born in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan. Both of the Chechen brothers are from an ethnic tribal society which may have played a large role in the act of terror which they committed. Former Pakistani High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Akbar Ahmed states that “The strike at Boston is, in all probability, the first terrorist attack in the United States in which the issues of tribalism and homegrown terrorism merged” (Ahmed, 2013). The Tsarnaev brothers are from the Tsarnaev clan of a small village in Chechnya titled Chiri-Yurt. Many Chechens were forced to emigrate to Kyrgyzstan under the rule of Stalin during World War II in 1944. Although the brothers grew up in Kyrgyzstan for most of their early life, they spent a year in Chechnya in 1994. There has been terrorism linked to Chechen fighters before (an attack on a Moscow theater, 2002, and a siege on a school in Beslan, 2004) (Halloran,

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