A Look at Brothers Suspected in the Boston Bombing

With an auto mechanic as its patriarch, the family of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers arrived in Cambridge, Mass., around 2002, assisted by a leader of the local Chechen community who helped finance their relocation, said a friend of the family that also rented a flat to them.

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The family, which included two boys and two girls, had come to America to seek refuge from the war in Chechnya, where a separatist rebellion that took on elements of radical Islam had been crushed by the Kremlin under presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. But soon after arriving, their efforts to adapt quickly ran into headwinds.

Early Friday police raided the apartment and sealed off the side street in Cambridge where members of the family lived.

Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the two brother, told reporters outside his home in Montgomery Village, Md., Friday that he was ashamed of what they allegedly did.

Mr. Tsarni urged his fugitive nephew Dzhokhar to turn himself in and ask for "forgiveness from the victims, from the injured...He put a shame on our family, he put a shame on the entire Chechnyan ethnicity."

Law enforcement officers descended on Mr. Tsarni's home Friday morning, and he was questioned by investigators for several hours. After he spoke to reporters, he appeared to be in tears as he walked back up the steps to his brick house on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Washington suburb. Mr. Tsarni said he hadn't seen the two brothers ears and learned they were suspects after receiving calls from the news media early Friday. A second uncle also lives in the area.

U.S. law-enforcement officials said the two brothers came to the U.S. at different times—one with his parents in 2002 and the other on his own in 2004. Intelligence and counterterrorism officials have been scouring records to look for intersections with the two men, officials said.

Records indicate one or both of the bombing suspects had spent time in the Caucasus region since they first immigrated to the U.S. and then returned to the U.S., officials said.

A profile on the Russian social-networking site Vkontakte under the name of Djohar Tsarnaev lists the profilee as a 2011 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and a resident of Boston. It also says that from 1999 to 2001 he attended School No. 1 in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, a mountainous republic along the Caspian Sea in Russia's restive south that's not far from Chechnya.

On the Vkontakte profile—the authenticity of which couldn't be independently verified—the profilee is listed as a Muslim, his birthday as July 22 and his "most important element of life" as "career and money." The only tagged picture that purports to be of Mr. Tsarnaev on the site—apart from the profile picture—shows him in a kitchen with his arm around a friend. The friend lists Massachusetts Institute of Technology as his school on his own Vkontakte profile. On the table in front of the two young men is a chicken dinner, ranch dressing and a jug of orange juice in a room that resembles a dorm kitchen.

A number of the elements featured on the Vkontakte profile page relate to Islam. Under "interesting pages," the profile has selected "Salamworld: My Religion—Islam" as well as another Islam-related page. One video on the profile appears to be a propaganda clip rallying jihadists to go to Syria to fight alongside rebels there. Another is an interview that Kuwaiti Sheikh Fahad Al Kandari conducted with a blind boy who grew up memorizing the Quran. Separately, the profile shows a video of a man parodying various different accents from the Caucasus region. According to the profile, Mr. Tsarnaev belongs to three groups on the site—two related to Chechnya and another related to music and movies.

Within minutes of his name trickling out on Friday, users of Vkontakte started posting scores of messages—some of them angry and accusatory—on Mr. Tsarnaev's profile. Others started sending him "photographic gifts" on the site that included police cars, sticks of dynamite and, in one case, a brick.

Andrea Kramer, a Cambridge attorney whose sons attended Cambridge Rindge & Latin School with suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, emphasized the diversity of the Cambridge community as its "strength and beauty." She said her children and their friends celebrated the fact that so many in the area had roots in other parts of the world.

"[Dzhokhar] wasn't 'them.' He was 'us.' He was Cambridge. This is something that happened here. The kids are trying to make sense of it. They're frustrated at people talking about him as a foreigner, because he was Cambridge," she said while under lockdown in her home.

A Boston photographer's website shows pictures of a man identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev training as a boxer, in a photo essay titled, "Will Box for Passport.'' Officials said the man on the site is the same as the bombing suspect.

One of the photo captions reads: "Originally from Chechnya, but living in the U.S. since five years, Tamerlan says: 'I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them.' "

The photos describe the man as a 196-pound boxer who planned to represent New England as a heavyweight at the National Golden Gloves competition in Salt Lake City, Utah. The date of the photos wasn't clear.

In another photo where the man identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev is shown playfully sparring with a woman while not wearing his shirt, he is quoted as saying it is unusual for him to do so because he is "very religious."

Another photo caption says his family fled Chechnya in the early 1990s and lived for years in Kazakhstan before coming to the U.S. as refugees.

Attempts to reach the photographer were unsuccessful.

The friend who rented a flat to the family said the father, Anzor Tsarnaev, was a talented car mechanic and aspired to open his own garage. But he never mastered English, the friend said, or opened his own workspace. He tried to make ends meet by doing odd repair jobs for $10 an hour.

About two years ago, the father was stricken with brain cancer, and departed to Germany last year for treatment, according to a friend of the family.

The family lived modestly in the top floor of a multifamily house on a side street in Cambridge, the friend said, helped partly by Section 8 housing funds and the largesse of their landlord, an elderly woman who also tutored and helped the family place the children in good local schools. The family got some financial help from Mr. Tsarnaev's brother, who was employed by a western oil company in Kazakhstan, said the family friend.

Both boys were good students, the family friend said, but Tamerlan dropped out of community college and was soon drawn into religious matters, he said. Dzhokhar "had a gentler demeanor," the family friend said, but had also apparently taken a deeper interest in religious affairs.

A spokeswoman for Bunker Hill Community College said Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in an accounting program there but didn't receive a degree or certificate.

Abbie Cohen, who went to elementary school and high school with Dzhokhar, and described him as a "a really good friend," said he was "a nice and quiet and studious kid.''

"When I saw the FBI video, it crossed my mind for maybe a second he looked familiar, like, that looks like Jahar. But I never would have acted on it because I thought there was no possible way.''

She said she remembered him as a boy in her 5th and 6th grade classes, but said he apparently left the country for a time, and then one day reappeared at her high school.

In high school, he was on the wrestling team, worked summers as a lifeguard, and "he was definitely better at art than me,'' said Ms. Cohen.

Samuel Gebru, who went to high school with the younger brother, Dzhokhar, remembered him as a "very quiet kid.''

"I never saw him in any circles that could cause trouble. I'm really very surprised,'' said Mr. Gebru.

In Cambridge, workers at Webster Auto Body at the corner of Webster Avenue and Norfolk Street believe the brothers' father, Anzor, worked at the body shop about five years ago.

"Just a good hard-working guy who didn't speak a lot of English," said manager Jerry Siegal, who doesn't recall the sons.

"It gives you a pit in your stomach," said Mr. Siegal.

Robert Couture, who lives on Norfolk Street, also said the father would fix cars on the street, which irritated some neighbors. Mr. Couture said he brothers, about six years ago, when they were younger , used to play pick-up soccer in the street.

"They were skinny, tall kids always playing soccer," Mr. Couture said.

The dense urban neighborhood sits in the Cambridge-Somerville line. It is ethnically diverse and a resident described it as "in transition" with artists moving in and newer condos changing the area somewhat. There are quite a few auto-body shops

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