BOSTON: The family of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev faced a quandary yesterday over where to bury his body as cemeteries across Massachusetts refused to accept it.
Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gun battle with police on April 19, four days after bombs he is believed to have set with his younger brother killed three people and injured another 264 at the marathon.
Relatives have said they want to have him buried locally, but several cemeteries in Massachusetts said they would not accept the remains for burial. Governor Deval Patrick said yesterday he would not get involved.
Under Islamic law, the body cannot be cremated, a procedure used in some cases of notorious criminals such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
“The whole situation is unprecedented,” said David Walkinshaw, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association. The state of Massachusetts does not own its own cemeteries, he said, and the federal government has only cemeteries for veterans, thus excluding Tsarnaev.
“The challenge here is that there’s no way to demand a cemetery allow for a burial to take place,” Walkinshaw said.
Tsarnaev’s body was taken to a funeral home, Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors, in Worcester last week after spending more than a week at a medical examiner’s office in Boston. Already several cemeteries including the Gardens at Gethsemane in West Roxbury have said they would not accept Tsarnaev’s body for burial.
REUTERS
