The media is reporting that the burial of Boston Marathom Bomb suspect Tamarlan Tsarnaev is going forward, but it is still shrouded in mystery as to which family members picked up the body and whether there will be a Muslim funeral.

While a funeral is a very private thing, and understandably after such grief and shock as finding out your relative is apparently an extremist and a bomber responsible for killing 3 people and wounding some 280 more, you want some privacy, the reality is your relative is now a public figure. He would have been charged (if he were alive) with using a weapon of mass destruction just as his little brother is now. The public has a right to know how these individuals became radicalized, who knew about it and when, and how such events might be prevented in the future. And that means, as it did for the Lanza family after the Newtown massacre, a close look at how they were raised and by what values and what broke down in their lives and in their families.

And as there are many stories swirling around it, and even a widespread belief among Russian and particularly Chechen emigres that the body isn't really him, or that he is still held in some secret dungeon, or that some other suspect was put in his place, or that the picture of his body is really an Iranian victim from 2009 and not him (yes, all of these stories have life), the actual funeral process will get plenty of scrutiny.

While the Boston press says it is not clear who is going to bury Tamarlan, and helicopters are even buzzing over it, one Russian reporter from Voice of America, Fatima Tlisova, has been talking to the community for days in an effort to get the story, and has posted her own private opinion on this on Facebook — I've obtained her permission to translate and post it — basically, it seems Uncle Ruslan, and no one else, has once again come through to do the right thing — even terrorists deserve a proper burial.

Fatima Tlisova:

My very personal opinion on the Tsarnaevs. In the last two weeks I have been talking to many people — all kinds. Some of them knew the family closely, some of them are members of that family. Some I found myself, others found me themselves. The style of communication has been very diverse — the most aggressive from the very beginning was the brothers' aunt — after my first interview with her, I thought this woman would come to the US and defend them. But she was the first to disappear. Their parents spoke very harshly and emotionally — but they, too, also decided to keep out of sight and not go to Boston. I don't want to speculate why the parents of a suspect in terrorism feel in more safety in Russia, where you can be killed for going to the wrong mosque. I don't know their motives and find it hard to believe in their justifications. At least for the reason that the mother lied when she said that she had made an agreement with the mosque in Cambridge about the funeral of her son — I was at the mosque, and no one had in fact contacted them.

Yesterday, at the morgue I was told that no one had come for the body. By that time I had already realized that the widow Katherine will also not bury her husband, even if she wanted to, and that her lawyers will not let her. Uncle Ruslan from the very beginning had provoked the terrible irritation of all the rest of the Tsarnaevs — he had the courage to apologize publicly. I then thought that probably he does not want to have anything to do with the future fate of his living and dead relatives. Yesterday in Watertown I learned that Ruslan turned out to be the only relative to take upon himself the organization of the funeral of his nephew. Ruslan called Tamerlan "a loser," but after many conversations with various people, I came to the conclusion that this was possibly the most correct definition.  But at the end, Ruslan was the only person who didn't abandon even this loser.

 UPDATE:

The Boston Globe now has this to report:

Kheda Saratova, a human-rights worker, said the Tsarnaev family does
not intend to bury Tamerlan until they find an independent coroner to
deliver an opinion. The Tsarnaevs have remained dubious of reports that
police were taking Tamerlan into custody when Dzhokhar reportedly ran
him over.

“The family is afraid that if Tamerlan is buried before they get all
the answers, many secrets will be buried with him, and this will make it
harder for Dzhokhar to defend himself in court,” Saratova said.

I have a number of comments on this entire question.

First of all, given all the contradictory statements from the family members, as Fatima has outlined from her direct journalist work, anything said about them or by them has to be checked and followed through.

Saratova may or may not be authorized or trusted to speak on the family, I don't know. She is knowledgeable, but the situation could be reversed.

Saratova herself is a controversial figure as this report at Caucasian Knot from 2010 reveals although she has performed incredible acts of bravery for years in a region that annihilates every good person..

And I have to say my heart sunk or perhaps my eyes rolled when I saw she was the one making statements on behalf of the family simply because I just don't know where the threads lead to now and who is really running this operation.

Perhaps it's all good and fine, and once again, a selfless halo'd human rights worker has come into the breach — as so many of us have had to do in this movement.

On the other hand, I've known first hand from working closely on the Chechen human rights issue particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s, the field is filled with opportunists, informants, human rights activists too close to Dudaev or the rebels or even Basaev; that there are many broken people that seem to seek out other broken lives like their own in any human rights group; that even the most reputable and courageous and near-perfect activists can nod, as Homer did, and so on.

There's a reason why I personally have not worked much on the Chechen issues since about 2002, particularly after translating Putin's book in 2000, where I concluded he was a thug who would be around for a long time to come. And that's because I concluded such work was futile. At least for me, from abroad, and I didn't have any intention of going into this region. The terrorists and the people chasing the terrorists are just way, way too dangerous to ever get involved in this area if you value your life.

I wonder who controls the medical examination field in Boston. The Irish? Now the Chechens will have to try to find an independent examiner who will go against his own colleagues in this city?