Alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev believed in 'majestic mind control'

A new report has claimed Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been mentally ill

Max Benwell@max_benwell
Monday 16 December 2013 12:30
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Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev heard voices inside his head and had an alter-ego, a report published in The Boston Globe claimed yesterday.

As part of a five-month investigation, the Globe spoke to a number of sources close to Tsarnaev. Donald Larking, 67, who attended the same Boston mosque as the suspected bomber, said Tsarnaev believed the voices were part of a “majestic mind control”, which was “a way of breaking down a person and creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist."

Larking also told the Globe that Tsarnaev was “torn” between himself and an alter-ego. “You can give a signal, a phrase or a gesture, and bring out the alternate personality and make them do things,” he said; “Tamerlan thought someone might have done that to him.”

According to the report, the voices “came to [Tsarnaev] at unexpected times, an internal rambling that he alone could hear. Alarmed, he confided to his mother that the voice 'felt like two people inside of me.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev: Friends said he dominated his younger brother and 'just didn't like America'

“As he got older, the voice became more authoritative, its bidding more insistent. Tamerlan confided in a close friend that the voice had begun to issue orders and to require him to perform certain acts, though he never told his friend specifically what those acts were.”

Tamerlan, 26, and his younger brother Dzhokhar, 20, are alleged to have planted the two pressure cooker bombs that killed three and injured more than 260 at the Boston Marathon in April. While Tamerlan was later killed in a shootout with police, his brother was captured and now potentially faces the death penalty under charges of terrorism.

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