Boston bombing suspect cannot be buried
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, -died in a shootout with the police- and his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, -currently hospitalized and facing terrorism charges- are being accused of having carried out the attacks of April 15 in the Boston Marathon, in which three people were killed and over 260 were injured.
After a police officer shot him dead, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, main suspect in the attack, his body cannot be buried since several cemeteries in the state of Massachusetts refused to perform the burial, despite the claims of Tsarnaev’s family.
“The situation is unprecedented,” said David Walkinshaw, spokesman for the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association. The state does not own its cemeteries and the federal government has only veterans’ cemeteries, which excludes Tsarnaev. “The challenge here is that there is no way to force a cemetery of accepting a burial,” said Walkinshaw.
Tamerlane’s body is currently in the Graham, Putnam and Mahoney Funeral in Worcester, a suburb of Boston. Its director, Peter Stefan, said “we have to bury this guy. Whatever it is, whoever it is, in this country we bury people.”
On the other hand, outside the funeral, protesters wave American flags and carry signs demanding the body to be sent to Russia. A local activist even began to raise funds for the body to be removed from the country.