Tsarnaev Claims Innocence; Mother Says Her Son Was ‘Driven Crazy’ By Brother’s Death

The mother of Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told the Associated Press in an interview on Thursday that her son says his health is recovering and that he had a very good doctor, but that he is struggling to understand what has happened and has claimed to her that he is innocent. Dzhokhar told his mother that he was no longer using a wheelchair and walking of his own accord when he spoke to her last week in the first and only phone conversation the two of them have had since police put him in custody.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the suspect's mother, maintained her belief in her son's innocence during the interview. "He didn't hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: What is this? What's happening?," she said, adding, "I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan," making reference to the suspect's older brother and alleged accomplice in the bombings which killed three people and injured 264.

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The interview was carried out in the apartment of the suspect's parents in what the news service described as a well-to-do neighborhood of the Dagestan capital of Makhachkala. In response to the AP's queries as to the place's spare furnishings, Anzor Tsarnaev, the suspect's father, answered that they had bought it expecting that Tamerlan, his wife and their daughter would move there later in the year. They planned to convert their old home on the city's outskirts into a dentist's office for Dzhokhar, who was a dental hygiene student.

"All I can do is pray to God and hope that one day fairness will win out, our children will be cleared, and we will at least get Dzhokhar back, crippled, but at least alive," Anzor Tsarnaev said.

The Atlantic Wire notes that Anzor had previously told the Associated Press that 19-year-old Dzhokhar was a second-year medical student, which was untrue - he was actually an undergraduate sophomore at UMass Dartmouth.

Authorities say that the suspect had made comments while in custody reflecting similar sentiments to those expressed in a note scrawled on an interior wall of the boat where he had sought refuge from a storm of police who had effectively shut down the city of Boston. The note indicated that the bombings were retribution for US military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims," the note reportedly said.