

Sandie Benitah, CP24.com





A Toronto woman who has identified herself as the aunt of the Boston bombing suspects said she will wait to see all the evidence before she believes her nephews are guilty of the crime.

“I’m a lawyer back home. Give me evidence. I participated in court sessions, where I had to prove the guilt of others,” said Maret Tsarnaev from outside her Etobicoke apartment. “Do the same here, show me evidence, give me more than a photo. But to be convinced that my nephews committed to these atrocities, convince me. Then come back and get my reaction and ask me how I feel.”

Tsarnaeva said she believes her nephews are being set up and that the photos of the young men at the site of the Boston Marathon bombing may have been set up, though she stopped short of saying who could be framing them.

She said she hasn’t been contacted by U.S. authorities but after she saw the photos, she was the one who called the FBI.

“I didn’t call right away. My first reaction was anger,” she said. “(I thought) How could this happen, how could they do this? For the sake of what? That was my reaction.”

Tsarnaeva said she called the FBI to tell them they couldn’t have done this and to ask for more evidence.

She said she found the photos strange because the brothers were not walking next to each other.

“Why wouldn’t they come together? Together as brothers. I’m suspicious this was staged, the picture was staged. By who? By whoever needs this, by whoever is looking for someone to blame.”

Tsarnaev said she contacted the FBI when she realized the young men whose photos were circulating in the media resembled her relatives.

The young men are being accused of planting and exploding a bomb at the Boston Marathon as well as killing a young police officer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology early Friday morning.

The older of the two, identified by Maret Tsnarnaev as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a gunbattle with police overnight and since then, authorities throughout the state have been involved in an intense manhunt for a 19-year-old suspect identified by the FBI as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a Chechen from Dagestan.

Relatives told The Associated Press that the brothers had lived near Boston and were living in the U.S.

The dead suspect has been identified by several media outlets but his name has not yet been officially confirmed by U.S. authorities.