`Misha’ Speaks: An Interview with the Alleged Boston Bomber’s `Svengali’
The New York Review of Books
April 28, 2013
By Christian Caryl
As the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings continues, one of
the more clouded aspects is the tale of `Misha,’ a mysterious US-based
Islamist who has been accused by members of the Tsarnaev family of
radicalizing Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two alleged
bombers. `It started in 2009. And it started right there, in
Cambridge,’ Tamerlan’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told CNN after the
attacks. `This person just took his brain. He just brainwashed him
completely.’ These accusations set off a frenzied search for what some
reports have called an Islamic Svengali, and over the past few days,
the FBI has said it has located and has been talking to `Misha,’
though his identity has remained unknown.
Today I was able to meet `Misha,’ whose real name is Mikhail
Allakhverdov. Having been referred by a family in Boston that was
close to the Tsarnaevs, I found Allakverdov at his home in Rhode
Island, in a lower middle class neighborhood, where he lives in
modest, tidy apartment with his elderly parents. He confirmed he was a
convert to Islam and that he had known Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but he
flatly denied any part in the bombings. `I wasn’t his teacher. If I
had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything
like this,’ Allakhverdov said.
A thirty-nine-year-old man of Armenian-Ukrainian descent, Allakhverdov
is of medium height and has a thin, reddish-blond beard. When I
arrived he was wearing a green and white short-sleeve football jersey
and pajama pants. Along with his parents, his American girlfriend was
there, and we sat together in a tiny living room that abuts the family
kitchen.
Allakhverdov said he had known Tamerlan in Boston, where he lived
until about three years ago, and has not had any contact with him
since. He declined to describe the nature of his acquaintance with
Tamerlan or the Tsarnaev family, but said he had never met the family
members who are now accusing him of radicalizing Tamerlan. He also
confirmed he had been interviewed by the FBI and that he has
cooperated with the investigation:
I’ve been cooperating entirely with the FBI. I gave them my computer
and my phone and everything I wanted to show I haven’t done anything.
And they said they are about to return them to me. And the agents who
talked told me they are about to close my case.
An FBI spokesman in Boston declined to comment on an ongoing
case. Allakverdov’s statements, however, seemed to bear out recent
reports that the FBI have not found any connection between `Misha’ and
the bomb plot.
One question is why members of the Tsarnaev family have made
accusations about Allakverdov. A close friend of the family in Boston
said that Misha was not known to have visited Tamerlan at home. I
interviewed Allakhverdov in Russian and it seems likely that in
whatever contact the two men had, they would have spoken Russian.
In many ways, Allakhverdov’s parents seem typical former-Soviet
émigrés who had embraced middle class life in the United States. His
father is an Armenian Christian and his mother is an ethnic
Ukrainian. The family had lived in Baku, Azerbaijan, but had left in
the early 1990s for the United States to escape growing persecution of
Armenian Christians there. The family was welcoming to me but very
nervous. `We love this country. We never expected anything like this
to happen to us,’ his father said.
Christian Caryl is a Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute and the
editor of Foreign Policy’s Democracy Lab website.=80©