Tamerlan, 26, the elder brother, turned more deeply to his Muslim faith as once-promising boxing prospects faded. Dzhokar, seven years his junior, won a college scholarship, gained U.S. citizenship and was seen by friends as embracing the opportunities of his new country.

Still, their lives were far more tightly bound than outsiders might have perceived. They shared a dark, secret connection until the moment that the FBI posted their images as the terrorists suspected of making and detonating twin pressure- cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15.

Such sibling plotting -- which is particularly difficult for law enforcement personnel to detect -- has precedents, said John Horgan, director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Pennsylvania State University. In such instances, siblings aren’t inclined to confide in outsiders, making their plans more covert than actions by a loose-lipped “lone wolf” operator or a terrorist cell, he said.

“It’s actually far more common than people realize, but it’s just one of those things that are not really recognized and talked about,” said Horgan, who also is an associate professor of psychology.

‘Deeply Discouraged’

Arie Kruglanski, a terrorism researcher at the University of Maryland at College Park, said the evidence so far points to a deeply discouraged Tamerlan, who at one point had ambitions to box for the U.S. Olympic Team.

“He wanted to be somebody important,” Kruglanski, a senior researcher at the federally funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said in a telephone interview.

Studies of terrorism show that those three factors -- a profound feeling of loss or failure, an ideology that addresses that humiliation and a reinforcing social process -- are the common elements motivating individuals to commit a violent act.

Tamerlan’s disappointment found relief in ideology, as he was drawn to radical Islamic thought, and he created a “shared reality” with his brother, said Kruglanski, who is a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland.

“Together, they formed this bubble, this molecule of extremism, and convinced themselves that the way to go is to basically declare a personal war on America,” he said.

Parents Gone

The brothers, who lived in Cambridge, came from the former Soviet Union to Massachusetts -- a young Dzhokar first followed by his brother and two sisters. Their parents returned separately in the past couple of years to Russia’s Dagestan region, near their original home in Chechnya.

Tamerlan was the extrovert and Dzhokar the introvert, John Curran of Watertown, Tamerlan’s former boxing coach who hadn’t seen them in a few years, told NBC News.

“The young brother was like a puppy dog following his older brother,” Curran said.

Horgan said it is “very plausible” that Tamerlan may have drawn Dzhokar to a dark view of life after trying unsuccessfully to assimilate into American culture.
Still, he said, “in all the cases we’ve looked at involving pairs of brothers or pairs of sisters, it’s not necessarily the sort of master-apprentice relationship that people think it is.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...rism-path.html

emang teroris itu biasanya orang2 yg sudah kehilangan harapan

apalagi setahun lalu nyokapnya ditangkep polisi karena mengutil di toko Lord & Taylor.

anehnya bom meledak lokasinya dekat dengan toko Lord & Taylor