Twitter account in name of Boston suspects’ mother asks for money
Social media users dismiss authenticity of @Tsarnaeva as she implores followers to send money for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s legal defense
Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.
A Twitter account purporting to belong to the mother of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev opened on Saturday and implored followers to provide money for Tsarnaev’s legal fund.
The user @Tsarnaeva appeared on the social media site on April 27, and a photo of a woman claiming to be Zubeidat Tsarnaeva holding up a sign with routing numbers for a Russian bank account emerged shortly thereafter. It was not clear whether the user was indeed Tsarnaev’s mother.
Tsarnaev was charged with joining with his older brother, Tamerlan, who was shot dead by police last week, in setting off shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon earlier this month. The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who immigrated to the United States about a decade ago with their parents.
US officials, meanwhile, said that the bombing suspects’ mother had been added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the deadly attack.
The @Tsarnaeva account tweeted impassioned statements in defense of Tsarnaev’s innocence and implored followers — who ballooned to 450 within the account’s first day of activity — to donate money for the Chechen-American’s legal defense fund.
“Tsarnaeva” also implored followers of her son’s account, @J_tsar, to follow and message her privately. Tsarnaev is currently in custody at a Massachusetts medical detention center, presumably without Internet access.
“Thankyou [sic]for your support. please wire money so that we can get a good lawyer,” the user tweeted. To another user, @Tsarnaeva wrote, “I will follow you when you send money for support of #FreeJahar.”
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According to a tweet by @Tsarnaeva late Saturday night, the account had already raised more than $2,000 in donations from sympathetic users. Many Twitter users hastened to denounce the user’s pleas for monetary support as a fraudulent scam.
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AP contributed to this report.
