The Maryland uncle for the two brothers suspected in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing angrily denounced his nephews as “losers” who failed to assimilate into American society, while saying it was a “fraud” to suggest their Islamic faith was to blame the attack.

Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of bombing suspects Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan, told reporters outside his home in Montgomery Village, Md., that he hasn’t seen them in years and wanted nothing to do with the family. He said the pair has brought shame on his family and all people from Chechnya, a region of Russia where he and his relatives are from.

“Of course we’re ashamed. … They are children of my brother, who had little influence over them,” he said.

He also told reporters gathered at his suburban Maryland home that the two brothers had no millitary training and had come to this country a decade ago because they have been given asylum from the political upheavals in the Russian republic of Chechnya.

Mr. Tsarni said the only motive he could think of for the attack was that the two young men were “losers” who were “not able to settle themselves” in America after arriving here. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was quoted in photo essay published about his hopes to make the U.S. Olympic boxing team that “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.”

Mr. Tsarni told reporters, “Of course [the family is] ashamed” and “shocked” by the reports that the two brothers carried out the Boston Marathon attacks, but rejected the suggestion their Islamic faith was to blame.

“It is a fraud, a fake to say that this had anything to do with the Islamic religion,” he said, saying he had last seen his nephews in December 2005 but had spoken to them as recently as three months ago.

“They have put shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity,” Mr. Tsarni said, urging the younger Mr. Tsarnaev, who was still at large Friday morning, to turn himself in.

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