Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP/Corbis

“What I think was behind it: Being losers,” said Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan. “Of course we’re ashamed.” In an emotional interview with eager reporters, Tsarni was calm and grave, but spoke elegantly of the nephews he hadn’t seen in years. He said he first learned of their involvement via an article on AOL.com, and that he was “shocked,” but not sympathetic. “Unbelievable — he absolutely deserved this,” Tsarni said of Tamerlan, who died in a police shootout last night. “I always told those two, Islam has always been there, just do your business. Work, go to school, be useful. Know why you came to America … I am not sympathizing with them.”

“Somebody radicalized them, but it wasn’t my brother,” said Tsarni. He blamed “hatred to those who were able to settle themselves” for the attacks. “These are the only reasons I can imagine,” he said. “Anything else to do with religion, to do with Islam, is a fraud, is a fake.”

“I respect this country. I love this country,” Tsarni said with force. “This country, which gives chance to everybody else to be treated as a human being. That’s what I feel about this country.”

In an earlier radio interview, Tsarni said, “I just wish they never existed. I am wordless.”