Christian Finds Grave for Boston Bomber: "Jesus Says Love Our Enemies"
For days and days Tamerlan Tsarnaev's corpse sat in the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Home in Worcester, Massachusetts, not so far away from where police killed the Boston bombing suspect on April 19. Authorities were mostly done examining Tsarnaev's body, of course, but as of last Saturday, four cemeteries in three states had rejected requests to bury him. And so he sat.
Hearing reports of people who had showed up to Graham Putnam & Mahoney to protest Tsarnaev's burial—"Feed him to the sharks!" read one sign—a Richmond, Virginia, woman named Martha Mullen, a licensed professional counselor, decided she was going to be the one to assist the dead man's family with putting him to rest.
"Jesus says [to] love our enemies," Mullen, who is a graduate of Ohio's United Theological Seminary, told the Boston Globe today. "So I was sitting in Starbucks and thought, maybe I’m the one person who needs to do something."
On Tuesday, after seeking out traditional Muslim burial requirements, Mullen emailed the Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, which was able to find her a plot within an hour. Mullen then contacted the Worcester Police Department to tell them she'd found a place for Tsarnaev to be entombed.
In the early morning yesterday, Tsarnaev's now famous uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, transported his nephew's body from Worcester to Doswell, Virginia, where his remains will be laid to rest at the Al-Barzakh Cemetery, pictured above.
"What Tsarnaev did is between him and God," an Islamic Funeral Services official told the Globe in a statement. "We strongly disagree with his violent actions, but that does not release us from our obligation to return his body to the earth."
