An uncle of the Boston bombers was previously married to a CIA officer’s daughter for three years, it emerged today.
Ruslan Tsarni, who publicly denounced his two terrorist nephews’ actions and called them ‘Losers’, even lived with his father-in-law agent Graham Fuller in his Maryland home for a year.
Mr Fuller was forced to explain the relationship today as news of the family link emerged online.
Son-in-law: Former CIA agent Graham Fuller, left, explained his relationship to the two Boston terror suspects’ uncle today. Ruslan Tsarni, right, was married for three years to his daughter, Samantha
He told Al-Monitor that his daughter, Samantha, was married to Ruslan, whose surname was then Tsarnaev, for three to four years in the 1990s.
The couple divorced in 1999 more than ten years after he left the agency in 1987.
‘Samantha was married to Ruslan Tsarnaev (Tsarni) for 3-4 years, and they lived in Bishkek for one year where Samantha was working for Price Waterhouse on privatization projects,’ Mr Fuller said.
‘They also lived in our house in [Maryland] for a year or so and they were divorced in 1999, I believe.
‘I, of course, retired from CIA in 1987 and had moved on to working as a senior political scientist for RAND.’
He said his son-in-law showed no interest in the agency or politics but spoke generally about his family in Chechnya.
He said any attempts to portray the relationship as a link between the security agency and the two terrorists was ‘absurd’.
‘Like all Chechens, Ruslan was very concerned about his native land, but I saw no particular involvement in politics,’ Fuller told Al-Monitor.
‘I doubt he even had much to say of intelligence value other than talking about his own family’s sad tale of deportation from Chechnya by Stalin to Central Asia. Every Chechen family has such stories.’
Nephews: Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could at one time count a CIA agent’s daughter as their aunt
Outraged: Ruslan Tsarni made his feelings against his nephews actions known to the media in the aftermath of the Boston attacks
Fuller visited his daughter and her husband in Bishek, as a former Russian history graduate himself interested in ‘Soviet minorities’.
He said he may have met the terror suspects’ father, Aznor, there once and his daughter knew the Tsarnaev family when Tamerlan was a toddler and before his younger brother was born.
‘I for one was astonished at the events, and to find myself at two degrees of separation from them,’ he added.
Ruslan Tsarni, who lives in Montgomery Village, Maryland, was thrust into the spotlight as the names of his two nephews emerged in connection to the Boston terror attack.
He stood on his driveway and attacked the two men calling them ‘Losers’.
He has since reported a rift between his family and that of his brother Aznor’s and said his older nephew Tamerlan had become increasingly extreme in his religious views.
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By Katie Davies
PUBLISHED: 23:34 GMT, 27 April 2013 | UPDATED: 05:55 GMT, 28 April 2013
Find this story at 27 April 2013
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