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26 April, 2013
From VOA Learning English, this is IN THE NEWS.
Americans continue to follow reports on people and events linked to a bomb attack more than a week ago during the Boston Marathon.
Two young men are accused of carrying out the attack. The two are brothers. The surviving suspect told investigators that he and his older brother had planned to drive to New York City to explode more bombs. Nineteen year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spoke from a hospital where he was taken after his capture.
His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died last week after a gun fight with police. He was 26 years old.
Police say the brothers caused two explosions near the finish line for the race. The explosions killed three people, including an eight-year- old boy and wounded more than 250 others.
The Tsarnaev brothers came to the United States with their family as refugees from the Chechen conflict with Russia.
Silvia Dominguez teaches sociology at Northeastern University in Boston. She says it is important to note that the Tsarnaev brothers were not immigrants, but refugees forced from their homeland by danger and conflict. She says refugees carry strong beliefs about the conflicts they fled. She says this is especially true when they leave areas where they experienced unfair treatment.
"The ideology around them is very significant and very powerful. And, there is an aspect of injustice that is very difficult to not want to act on."
Russian officials had warned America's Federal Bureau of Investigation about the older brother after he visited Russia for six months last year. American investigators have questioned the mother and father in Dagestan, where they now live separately. The investigators wanted to learn if Tamerlan Tsarnaev had contacts with Islamist extremists.
Professor Dominquez says it is possible that the older brother never developed an identity as an American because he left the Caucasus area during the Chechen conflict. She says young refugees know they were lucky to get out but also know that many others could not escape.
She says those who leave at a young age need to have a sense of belonging in their new country. She says it is very important to have activities to get young refugees involved.
"You know this is not just in the United States. It's any country that receives refugees."
Television broadcasts show Zubiedat Tsarnaeva arguing that her sons did not carry out the crimes. She says accusations against them are false and part of a plot.
Enrique Pumar teaches sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington. His recent research deals with migration and violence. He notes that the Tsarnaev family was divided with the father and mother in Russia, and their sons in the United States. He says it is much more difficult to adapt to a different country without the support of a family or a community.
"A lot of times immigrants that are alone and don't have a community and support group oftentimes they suffer from status deprivation. They tend to be violent or at least deviant."
Police have charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with using a weapon of mass destruction. The crime is punishable by death.
And that's IN THE NEWS. I'm Steve Ember.
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