Bombing Suspect's Instagram Account Prime Focus of Investigators
In the wake of the Boston bombings, investigators are looking into every lead and are finding new clues that are contained within various social media profiles created by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
One of those profiles was a recently deleted Instagram account that has been linked to the younger Tsarnaev, which was taken down shortly before the Boston attack.
Reports indicate that the profile belonging to the user name "jmaster1," was Tsarnaev which showed he had "liked" a photo Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. Basayev had previously taken credit for the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, where 40 terrorists and 130 civilians were killed when Russian special forces used an unknown chemical compound to clear the building.
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The deleted Instagram account also contained pictures that were "liked" of another pro-Chechnya image and included several hashtags: #FreeChechenia #Jihad #Jannah #ALLAH #Jesus and #God.
While investigators maintain that the "linking" of pictures of controversial figures does not make anyone a terrorist, it does help when compiling a psychological profile of the accused terrorist.
It is also an object of interest, given the account was deleted before the attack. Meanwhile, other social media accounts remained active, even while federal authorities actively sought out the younger Tsarnaev during a city-wide manhunt that shut down the city of Boston.
"If I were an investigator right now, obviously the platform he deleted matters the most," Juliette Kayyem, a CNN terrorism analyst, said during a recent interview.
Investigators are also looking into an account on the Russian social networking site VKontakte, where some of the more anti-Russian and anti-west sentiments are published.
"Part of the anti-Russian views on the part of young Chechens are probably a combination of the legacy of war and simply being young and angry," Slate's Mike Walker wrote. "Those who grew up outside of the region, though, may be captivated by a romanticized extremism and maybe more inclined to actually carry something out."
