Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed two weeks ago, has yet to be buried after Cambridge on Sunday joined several other Massachusetts communities that have rejected the remains of the 26-year-old ethnic Chechen.
Cambridge city officials agreed with
other area cemeteries in refusing Tsarnaev's remains on their property, citing the stress it would cause to residents who have loved ones buried on the same grounds.
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"The difficult and stressful efforts of the citizens of the city of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests, and widespread media presence at such an interment," Cambridge city manager Bob Healy said in a statement obtained by the Los Angeles Times. "The families of loved ones interred in the Cambridge Cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace."
Cambridge was Tsarnaev's home in the United States after he emigrated with his family in 2002 from the Russian Republic of Dagestan.
Tsarnaev 's mother and father remain in Russia and have continuously postponed their trip to the United States, fearing how officials and the public will treat them.
Since Tsarnaev's immediate family was unavailable, Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, of Maryland, has been tasked with handling his Muslim burial rites.
"Tamerlan Tsarnaev has no other place to be buried," Tsarni told reporters on Sunday outside Worcester funeral home where the body was being held. "A dead person needs to be buried. That’s what tradition requires, that’s what religion requires, and I guess that’s what morals require. . . I’m left alone to deal with this matter."
Per Muslim tradition, Tsarnaev's body was washed and shrouded in sheets as of Sunday night, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Shortly after the Tsarnaev brothers were implicated in the Boston Marathon bombing, Tsarni described them as "losers" to reporters, adding, "They have put shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity."
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is being held in a 10-by-10-foot cell with a steel door at the Devens Federal Medical Center outside Boston.
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