The sister of the men suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings was arrested in New York on Wednesday on suspicion of threatening to bomb her boyfriend’s ex, a police spokesman said.

Ailina Tsarnaeva, 24, sister of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, turned herself in to the New York City Police Department, an NYPD spokesman told the Los Angeles Times.

There, Tsarnaeva, who lives in North Bergen, N.J., was arrested on suspicion of aggravated harassment and making a phone threat, a misdemeanor, said the spokesman, Lt. John Grimpel.

The victim was an unidentified woman living in Harlem who shares a child with Tsarnaeva’s boyfriend, Grimpel said.


The arrest was first reported by the New York Post, which reported that the threat was connected to a custody dispute.

Grimpel told The Times that Tsarnaeva made the threatening phone call Monday.

“Over the phone, she commented about a bomb, a bomb threat,” Grimpel said, saying that the misdemeanor charge fit what was said in the call. “If there’s a real bomb, obviously it’s different.”

Tsarnaeva came to the U.S. in 2003 with Tamerlan and another sister, Bella. Dzhokhar and their parents, Anzor and Zubeidat, had arrived a year earlier and settled in Cambridge, Mass.


Dzhokhar is charged with setting two pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The attack, in which Tamerlan also allegedly participated, killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

The brothers also are suspected of killing MIT Police Officer Sean Collier a few days later, then getting into a shootout with police that resulted in Tamerlan’s death and Dzhokhar’s eventual capture.

If convicted, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal counts connected to the bombing, including using a weapon of mass destruction. His trial is scheduled to begin in November.

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