{"id":19413,"date":"2013-04-23T20:11:49","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T04:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=19413"},"modified":"2013-04-23T20:47:42","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T04:47:42","slug":"mikhail-teterin-who-is-misha-tamerlans-rasputin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/23\/mikhail-teterin-who-is-misha-tamerlans-rasputin\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is “Misha”? \u2013 Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Rasputin"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been a number of news accounts<\/a> of Tamerlan\u2019s “mentor,” a major influence on his path to jihad: the Uncle, Ruslan, has said his name is “Misha<\/a>,” and that he is an Armenian convert to Islam living in the Boston area, balding, with reddish hair<\/a>, middle-aged looking. So far, he hasn\u2019t been turned up. But that may be coming to an end\u2026.<\/p>\n

Laura Rozen, a crack reporter on the intelligence beat, recently tweeted a video off an Islamic web site about Armenian converts to Islam: here it is<\/a>. The guy in the video, who is clearly instructing new recruits, fits the description: balding, with surviving follicles reddish, and\u00a0older. She also tweeted this<\/a>: a series of posts about the Islamic Society of Boston University, which she got by googling “Misha Islamic Society of Boston University” \u2013 but found they had been deleted. Hmmm\u2026 what to do?<\/p>\n

Well, I tried googling<\/a> “Islamic Society of Boston University” in quotes<\/i> plus “Misha” all by itself\u2013 and came up with the deleted posts and this one<\/a> from the Google group soc.culture.soviet: Misha\u2019s email address is listed in the header <\/i>of the last entry on the first page of the Google list. Click on the entry and you come up with an announcement of a lecture from the Islamic Society of Boston University and below that a post from someone named Mikhail whose Armenian-sounding last name I will not publish, and whose web address matches<\/a> Misha\u2019s (click on his profile, and the web address comes up<\/a>): the post consists of a single link to an old column<\/a> by Bill Safire attacking the Soviet advance in Chechnya\u2019s war.<\/p>\n

If you Google Mikhail\u2019s full name you get this<\/a>, a defense of Chechen “freedom-fighters” from someone comparing them to the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993:<\/p>\n

“Was there a single explosion made by Chechen freedom fighters<\/em>
\n(terrorists) in Moscow? Spare those organized by Chechen mafia…<\/em>
\nBy very modest estimates, Russia killed 30000 people in Chechnya,<\/em>
\nAFAIK. How many have died in World Trade Center explosion? (rather<\/em>
\nweak, but still…)<\/em><\/p>\n

“Do not even bring this up, there is not a shadow of analogy.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Google<\/a> Mikhail\u2019s full name plus “Chechnya” and you get this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“That was my attempt to explain why I am \u2018on Chechens’ side\u2019, even<\/em>
\nafter they’ve used such methods as taking hostages, and attacking<\/em>
\na peacefull town. I was also trying to place most of the responsi-<\/em>
\nbility for the war to the invader — Russia. We may argue who pro-<\/em>
\nvoked it, but the fact is — Russia started, started with invasion.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Pretty dark stuff. A simple name search comes up with this<\/a>, a post wherein the author argues that “it is impossible for anyone to have a peaceful, normal relationship” with Russia. And here he pops up<\/a> in a discussion labeled “Orion Group,, Satanism, NWO, and \u2018ruling elite.\u2019” The header exhorts the reader: “Do not carry the poison of evil within yourself.” Here<\/a> he makes the argument that \u2018assassinations are not terrorism.”<\/p>\n

There\u2019s lots more, especially when it comes to Chechnya<\/a> and the cause of Chechen independence, a subject “Misha” is virulent on.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not drawing any conclusions here: I\u2019m just asking questions. Is this<\/a> the<\/em> “Misha,” the nefarious influence on Tamerlan \u2013 who perhaps inspired him to go to Chechnya and take up the cause of jihad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been a number of news accounts of Tamerlan\u2019s “mentor,” a major influence on his path to jihad: the Uncle, Ruslan, has said his name is “Misha,” and that he is an Armenian convert to Islam living in the Boston area, balding, with reddish hair, middle-aged looking. So far, he hasn\u2019t been turned up. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19413"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19420,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413\/revisions\/19420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19413"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}