Uncle urges Boston bombing suspect to turn self in

MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Maryland (AP) - The uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects urged his nephew to turn himself in Friday, saying he had brought shame to the family and the entire Chechen ethnicity...

MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Maryland (AP) — The uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects urged his nephew to turn himself in Friday, saying he had brought shame to the family and the entire Chechen ethnicity.

“Yes, we’re ashamed. They’re the children of my brother,” Ruslan Tsarni told reporters outside his home in Maryland.

The suspects were identified by law enforcement officials and family members as Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, brothers from the violence-wracked Russian region of Dagestan.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a 26-year-old who was seen in surveillance footage released by the FBI on Thursday in a black baseball cap, was killed overnight in a police shootout, officials said.

His brother, a 19-year-old college student, escaped. He was seen wearing a white baseball cap in the images from Monday’s deadly bombing near the marathon finish line.

“Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness,” Tsarni said.

Tsarni called his nephews “losers” and said his family had not seen them since December 2005. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade.

Tsarni said his brother left the U.S., and he had not talked to him since 2009.

Chechnya has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings.

Tsarni said vehemently that Chechnya had nothing to do with the attack. He said his nephews had struggled to settle themselves in the U.S. and ended up “thereby just hating everyone.”

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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