Most family members of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects are standing by them, and expressing doubts that the two brothers were actually responsible for the bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 180 others.
 
Their sister -- whose home was searched by the FBI today in New Jersey -- told reporters she wasn't sure the accusations against her brothers were true. Police said she's cooperating with the investigation. They describe her as "heartbroken, surprised and upset."
 
Their father, speaking from southern Russia, insists his sons "were set up.'' He says he saw on TV that his older son, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed by authorities, and that 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev is being intensely pursued. The father describes the 19-year-old as a "true angel" and an "intelligent boy," who was studying medicine.

"We expected him to come on holidays here," the father said.

"They were set up, they were set up!" he exclaimed. "I saw it on television; they killed my older son Tamerlan."

Tsarnaev, badly agitated, gave little more information and ended the call angrily, saying, "Leave me alone, my son's been killed."

In Toronto, an aunt of the two suspects says the older one recently became a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day. She said she doesn't believe they could have been involved in Monday's attack.
 
But an uncle who lives in Maryland says he's "ashamed" of his nephews. He urged the 19-year-old to turn himself in and to "ask for forgiveness from the victims."
 
When he was asked what might have provoked the bombings, Ruslan Tsarni said, "Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves." He said his nephews had struggled in the U.S. and ended up "thereby just hating everyone."

The younger Tsarnaev gave few clues as to his inner life on his profile on Vkontakte, a Russian equivalent of Facebook, though he did include websites about Islam among his favorites.

The family's origins are in Chechnya, the mostly Muslim Russian republic where separatist rebels fought two full-scale wars with Russian forces since 1994.

A spokesman for Chechnya's leader said the family left Chechnya long ago and went to Central Asia, then moved to Dagestan, a Muslim republic adjacent to Chechnya that has been the site of a sporadic insurgency for more than a decade.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attended School No. 1 in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. The principal's secretary at School No. 1, Irina Bandurina, told the AP that Tsarnaev left for the U.S. in March 2002.

Mass. bomb suspect's mom-in-law sickened by attack

The mother-in-law of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed during a gunbattle with police said Friday her family is sickened by the horror inflicted by the deadly attack.

Judith Russell, whose daughter Katherine was married to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who came to the U.S. from Russia, read a statement from inside her home in North Kingstown through a partially open doorway.

"Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred," Russell said. "In the aftermath of the Patriots' Day horror we know that we never really knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev."

Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who remains at large, are the suspects in Monday's marathon bombing, which killed three people and wounded more than 180 others. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed overnight following a spate of violence in which authorities say the brothers shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology policeman, severely wounded another officer and hurled explosives at police during a car chase.

Russell, whose family lives on a cul-de-sac in a wooded, suburban neighborhood, said, "Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted."

Neighbor Paula Gillette, who lives across the street, said Katherine Russell left for college a few years ago and when she came back she would dress in Muslim garb with head coverings. She said Russell and her husband had a young daughter but Russell appeared to be living at the house without her husband.

She said Russell and her parents have been good neighbors.

"Everything looked very peaceful," Gillette said.