In the lobby of her Etobicoke apartment building, the aunt of the two Boston bombing suspects shouted one word over and over as reporters questioned her about her now-infamous nephews — one dead, the other leading police on a chase Friday that effectively shut down Boston.

“Evidence,” Maret Tsarnaeva said repeatedly, her voice high with emotion. “I can’t lightly accept this kind of accusations without supporting evidence. Forgive me, but I cannot.”

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Tsarnaeva, is aunt to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old who survived an overnight shootout and police chase, and his older brother Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in the shootout. The family is ethnically Chechen.

Tsarnaeva had not spoken to the men in about five years, but said she “knew them as angels” and does not believe they were responsible for the attack.

“I don’t know them in a way that they could be capable of this,” she said. She would not rule out the possibility that the photos showing the brothers at the scene had been staged.

“I have to question everything. That’s my nature.”

Many members of the family moved to the U.S. in the early 2000s. Dzhokhar arrived in 2002 with his parents, then Tamerlan came in 2003, with the suspects’ two sisters.

Tsarnaeva, who says she had been a lawyer in Chechnya, claims to have helped with their refugee paperwork.

Tamerlan had married what he described as “a good Christian girl” in the U.S., and had a 3-year-old child, she said.

Tsarnaeva could not say what either nephew was doing recently, but it was confirmed Friday that Tamerlan had studied accounting at a community college but did not finish. Dzhokhar is a student at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, numerous media reported Friday.

As a Chechen, Tsarnaeva says she is accustomed to being set up by the police, and does not believe that the photos or the reports from the FBI are true.

People should not just “swallow” everything the government is saying, she said.

“Being a Chechen … you always have to watch your back,” she said.

On Friday, Tsarnaeva called a hotline to ask for more evidence linking her nephews to the attack.

“I said please, take that into account. Give evidence. Give at least evidence to family members. Because I will never accuse my relatives, my nephews, without having evidence.”

The entire family is Muslim, though Tsarnaeva did not know how devout they were. In the last two years, however, Tamerlan had started praying five times a day, she said.

She described both nephews as smart and athletic, saying Tamerlan had been an amateur boxer. He competed in the National Golden Gloves competition in 2009.

Tsarnaeva said the boys’ father, her brother Anzor, was soft-hearted. He had recently moved to Russia.

“I don’t know how he’s taking this,” she said.

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Other members of the suspects’ family were speaking out Friday; Tsarnaeva’s younger brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told reporters in Maryland that he was ashamed of his nephews, and that they were “losers” who couldn’t “settle themselves” in the U.S., according to numerous reports.

Responding to her brother’s words, Tsarnaeva said Ruslan Tsarni had been expecting a lot of the men, especially Tamerlan, who had been his favourite.

To her surviving nephew, Tsarnaeva said: “I just hope this is not true, because I don’t have evidence.”

“If that is you, you take the blame…. You did it for some purpose. Explain it, take some responsibility. What else can I say?”