“Misha” Speaks: An Interview with the Alleged Boston Bomber’s “Svengali”
Christian Caryl of The New York Review of Books is the first to track down and report on “Misha,” or the, “Islamic Svengali,” a “mysterious US-based Islamist who has been accused by members of the Tsarnaev family of radicalizing Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two alleged bombers” of the Boston Marathon. Caryl reports Misha’s real name is Mikhail Allakhverdov and he is a 39-year-old man of Armenian-Ukranian descent living in Rhode Island. In their interview, Allakherdov told Caryl, “I wasn’t his [Tamerlan’s] teacher. If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this.”