There have been a number of news accounts of Tamerlan’s “mentor,” a major influence on his path to jihad: the Uncle, Ruslan, has said his name is “Misha,” and that he is an Armenian convert to Islam living in the Boston area, balding, with reddish hair, middle-aged looking. So far, he hasn’t been turned up. But that may be coming to an end….
Laura Rozen, a crack reporter on the intelligence beat, recently tweeted a video off an Islamic web site about Armenian converts to Islam: here it is. The guy in the video, who is clearly instructing new recruits, fits the description: balding, with surviving follicles reddish, and older. She also tweeted this: a series of posts about the Islamic Society of Boston University, which she got by googling “Misha Islamic Society of Boston University” – but found they had been deleted. Hmmm… what to do?
Well, I tried googling “Islamic Society of Boston University” in quotes plus “Misha” all by itself– and came up with the deleted posts and this one from the Google group soc.culture.soviet: Misha’s email address is listed in the header of the last entry on the first page of the Google list. Click on the entry and you come up with an announcement of a lecture from the Islamic Society of Boston University and below that a post from someone named Mikhail whose Armenian-sounding last name I will not publish, and whose web address matches Misha’s (click on his profile, and the web address comes up): the post consists of a single link to an old column by Bill Safire attacking the Soviet advance in Chechnya’s war.
If you Google Mikhail’s full name you get this, a defense of Chechen “freedom-fighters” from someone comparing them to the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993:
“Was there a single explosion made by Chechen freedom fighters
(terrorists) in Moscow? Spare those organized by Chechen mafia…
By very modest estimates, Russia killed 30000 people in Chechnya,
AFAIK. How many have died in World Trade Center explosion? (rather
weak, but still…)
“Do not even bring this up, there is not a shadow of analogy.”
Google Mikhail’s full name plus “Chechnya” and you get this:
“That was my attempt to explain why I am ‘on Chechens’ side’, even
after they’ve used such methods as taking hostages, and attacking
a peacefull town. I was also trying to place most of the responsi-
bility for the war to the invader — Russia. We may argue who pro-
voked it, but the fact is — Russia started, started with invasion.”
Pretty dark stuff. A simple name search comes up with this, a post wherein the author argues that “it is impossible for anyone to have a peaceful, normal relationship” with Russia. And here he pops up in a discussion labeled “Orion Group,, Satanism, NWO, and ‘ruling elite.’” The header exhorts the reader: “Do not carry the poison of evil within yourself.” Here he makes the argument that ‘assassinations are not terrorism.”
There’s lots more, especially when it comes to Chechnya and the cause of Chechen independence, a subject “Misha” is virulent on.
I’m not drawing any conclusions here: I’m just asking questions. Is this the “Misha,” the nefarious influence on Tamerlan – who perhaps inspired him to go to Chechnya and take up the cause of jihad?
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